Frankie Plegger got the idea looking at a travelogue on TV, three men and one woman in an oversized dugout canoe on a small river aiming itself for the Amazon, the water around them burgeoning with flesh eaters of all kinds. All kinds. Crocks or ‘gators or caiman, or whatever they had down there that grew tails long as houses, and then the piranha like an army of friggin’ fire ants. Bet they could get her to screw all day, he thought, if they threatened to throw her over the side, and her big enough, proud enough, all woman right down to her goddamn toes. In a pair of beat-up and ragged denim shorts she had hips that caught onto his eyes like his own personal clamps, as if they had his name on them: Frankie’s stuff, they said. Her secrets were fingers away. Oh, he could smell her, the bends in her, the dips, the fadeaways to you-know-what. The aroma was magic and he remembered someone saying once a long time ago it was the essence of life itself, that down-in aroma, that not-ever-letting-go smell. And he bet she couldn’t even swim, not a stroke. That’s all it would take, a non-swimming non-fucker who suddenly meets life head on, right where she couldn’t walk away from it.

He wouldn’t even have to practice at all, just trigger the ultimatum out in the middle of the lake, a full mile if an inch; fuck or swim, baby. Bang! Shake the canoe. Bang! Bang! Make her take her clothes off and neatly fold them and hand them to him as evidence legal enough for even a NOW-biased court. Bang! Bang! Bang! Make her peel her sweet little panties off like she was slowly stripping the skin off a banana, and the moonlight playing her golden as a goddess, knowing what shadow is and what shadow does. If she threatened to scream, he’d tip the canoe over, letting her have her way, down in the lily weeds thick and strong as webs of wire. Steel spiders, he thought, and loved the image he had created for himself, feeling the magic of it spinning wildly out of hand. Steel spiders. Goddamn!!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Get a chick old enough and it would be a lot safer than screwing around with kids and hoping they’d keep their mouths shut afterwards and not having to tell them his phony made-up buddy had taken pictures of them pulling down their jeans or taking it in their mouths down in the vacant foundation where he’d promised them model planes like a camouflaged Spitfire with real spent .22 shells for exhaust ports or an original set of old Lionels from a great collector “who died just last week and left them to me and loved doing what you do only now he’s dead and can’t do it any more.” Stroke ‘em any way you can, Frankie. Like that Havendarp kid. He could be a winner for a long while if he kept his mouth shut. And the Brinkley kid who had no fears, it seemed, down behind the old vacant house and again right under the porch with Frankie’s mother hanging out the laundry right above them and the kid waiting for his model planes. Tough luck, kid!

Leeanna was her name, he found out from Hazel, the woman working the diner counter, who liked the come-on look in Frankie’s eyes, the way it used to be for her. Frankie had seen this piece at the diner; “She lives back of the fire station, Frankie. I guess she’s 20 or 21 and works for the doctors in that medical center on Garrison.”

Her smile was wider. “She looks hot, don’t she, Frankie? That’s the way I used to look.” Hazel had a way of moving that said age didn’t want to take hold of her, not really. She was as live as an open socket, her lips red and wet, nipples near black under a thin yellow blouse, the clutch of black hair alive under her arms he’d seen just that one time and it still made him shiver. She was a monument to something only women had. That thought made him shake his head and think on it.

“You’re not done yet, Hazel.” Said it he did like a hot fudge Sundae being propped on the counter, sugar and all the old goodies, the old cherry right up on top. “You got lots of rocks in your crib. You ain’t shot off all your rocks, not by a long shot.” The old bitch, came another thought, would grasp at any promise and he hung it out there like dangling a fat worm for a hungry trout heading upstream.

“I’ll point you out to her real cozy, Frankie. Real cozy. That’s what friends are for, ain’t it the truth. She’s Eddie Brinkley’s cousin. He has that little plumbing place off the square.” His hand fell across her wrist as warm as a promise. Frankie knew about Eddie Brinkley and it made him think about Brinkley’s kid, Bobby, smooth as peaches, behind the vacant house, under the porch more than once.

Leeanna came into the diner late one night, ordered a hamburg trilby and a coffee.

“Gee, Leeanna, that’s what Frankie over there just had.” Hazel’s nod was at Frankie who had heard every word, who kept his eyes on Leeanna’s eyes, who didn’t let them wander much as he wanted to. “Frankie, this is Leeanna. She works at the medical place on Garrison. Leeanna, this is Frankie, an old friend of mine. Say hi.”

“Didn’t I see you down at the beach one day,” Frankie said. Right on it, baby.

“I don’t have much time for the beach.” Her voice was smooth and her jugs were good-sized jugs, that he could tell, and her skin was juice cool. It made him tremble. He wondered if she could detect it.

“Maybe it was on the lake, down by Simmons’ boathouse where they have the rentals. I go down there a lot.” No sense wasting any time, he thought. Get right to it. If she didn’t pick it up, he’d give her another try.

“Not the lake either. I don’t swim very well. A little. But not too well.” One small dimple rode at the corner of her mouth. He swore she was winking at him straight on.

“I tell you, Leeanna, there’s nothing like a canoe ride out there on a quiet night, the moon bouncing off your soul, the loons at the far end crying as if they’ve lost their mother or their best friend, the lake sheer as a pane of glass. Once, out in the middle, about as far away as you can get from everything, I smelled the lilies from the cove way over by the old icehouse.” The old shovel felt good in his hands. Goddamn!!

It was enough. First there was a walk one night, holding hands eventually, his hard-on crabbing his walk half the time, her saying little. He kissed her once, lightly, when he really wanted to toss his whole tongue right down her throat, and he knew she felt his rod against her. It was handing her a compliment, he figured. She’d understand, he was sure. It was in her nature to understand such things. All women knew. Hazel, even in her spending days, knew.

The third time they were in the canoe, in the middle of the lake, the moon barely rising in a crescent out over the hill. He was thinking her legs were absolutely friggin’ fabulous stretched out in front of her, sitting in the middle of the canoe and facing him, her short shorts creased where they ought to be creased, like they were molded in place alive. She had great tits. He couldn’t wait. “Leeanna,” he said, “I’m trying to be a gentleman, bet your ass I am, but I can’t make it. I got to have you tonight. Tonight you do it for me or I’ll throw you right over the side of this goddamn boat. It’s easy, kid. All you got to do is fuck or swim, and you ain’t too good at swimming, but I bet you’re a great piece. Am I right.” For her he was all ready; she was luminous in the faint light, and the long elegant legs were so fabulous he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

“You’d really do that, Frankie, throw me in if I didn’t do it for you. It didn’t have to be like this, you know.” Those eyes of hers were enormous, and full of expressions he couldn’t read, but like they were going to go right through him. Her jugs, he swore were going to pop right out. “Maybe we could have done it in a few months, when I got to know you better. I was just waiting for the right guy.”

“That’s the way it is, kid. Fuck or swim.” He was thinking of the piranha again and the big chick in the canoe with the guys. What did they do when they camped for a night?

Her voice didn’t come oozing out of fright, but it wasn’t folded over on itself either. “Frankie, I told you, I don’t swim. I’m terrified of the water. I almost drowned once.” On the sides of the canoe her hands and arms had stiffened. Her eyes were bigger. Her jugs were bigger. A button, he knew, had popped off her shirt. The moon was working on her face; the lips so edible, ajar and beautifully breathless.

“You can start by taking them shorts off, kid. I got to get a look at you.” Those legs were the highway to heaven and back.

“What if I don’t, Frankie? Will you really let me drown? What’ll people say?” She was a cool kid. You had to see that.

“Nobody knows you’re here with me, kid. It’s fuck or swim, simple as that.” As a handy bit of punctuation, he aimed the paddle at her.

“Right here in the canoe? Out in the open?” In the middle of the canoe, balancing herself perfectly, she stood up.

“Right here, kid, or over you go. Now get them shorts off. And don’t rock the boat or you’ll be in over your head before you know it. There’s no bottom out here, that’s what they tell me.”

In the pale light of a crescent moon and a sky yet faintly blue, she stripped her shorts off, slipped them down her thighs. Her panties, nothing more than a shoelace it seemed, came off next. At her crotch the darkness grabbed him with a mythic loveliness and want. His mouth began to water. The breeze touched him faintly, the moon froze in place on the hilltop, and her breasts came out of her bra as if they had unfolded from heaven itself. For that split moment, out in the middle of the lake, the moon giving up all its secrets, she was the most fantastic creature he had ever seen.

“Come up here real careful,” he said, his voice getting heavy and husky. “We got some pre-game stuff we’re gonna do.” He started to unbuckle his pants, when Leeanna Brookson, non-swimmer, apparent virgin, slipped over the side of the canoe and was gone. A faint ripple was all that was left, like from a full 10-rated dive off the low board. The small handful of clothes had gone with her.

She’d have to break surface soon, he thought, hoping she wouldn’t be screaming at him, waking up the lakeside. No other boats were around. No lights on the shore. No more ripples in the water.

Five minutes later he knew she wasn’t coming up. The woman in the dugout canoe, the one with the great hips, came back to him again. Piranha and crocks and gators teemed in the darkness below the surface of the lake. In his chest came the ultimate pounding of his heart. This he hadn’t bargained for.

Later, cautiously, he beached the canoe just below Simmons’ Boathouse from where he had earlier slid it loose of a line of chain. The partly opened link of chain he replaced on the same bracket he had taken it from. Then, with no one in sight, he slipped off into the darkness. Maybe it was better with the kids, he thought. They never came off this way, didn’t have the guts she had. What the hell, she might stay down for a year if caught in the weeds.

First thing in the morning the knock at the front door was loud, official, frightening.

“Frankie,” his mother yelled from the kitchen, “will you see what that racket is.”

Frankie Plegger opened the door to three policemen, two uniformed and one in civilian clothes. They walked into the front hall. Frankie could feel his heart thumping.

The plain-clothes cop said, “You Frankie Plegger?”

“Yeah, sure. What’s going on?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” the guy in plain clothes said. “You mind telling us where you were last night?”

They couldn’t have found her already, he thought, unless some goddamned fisherman had spotted her in the weeds. ”Just hanging around, that’s all. I hang around a lot.”

“Yuh, we know that, Frankie. Were you down at the lake at all last night?”

How should he handle this? Nobody had seen them, he was sure. Nobody at all. No boats or canoes had been out on the pond. His ass was covered. He’d only known her for a few days. What the hell.

“You know a girl named Leeanna Brookson, Frankie?” The plainclothes guy was a hard looker. A spot of black sat on one corner of his mouth like a cigar had sat there half its life and had just spun loose of itself. The wrinkles in his face were harsh as an old washboard, and just as deep. “You know her, don’t you, Frankie?” His eyes were like searchlights, not moving but boring at him.

“Sure I do. Had a couple of dates with her.” Keep the tenses right, he thought, in line with everything. “Nothing real serious. Seems like a great kid. I was with her two nights ago. We were walking. Something happen I don’t know about?” That’s it, be cool, he thought. They probably spend most of their time in traffic court.

“You ever go out on the lake in them canoes down there at Simmons’?” The black spot was still on the cop’s lip. Frankie prayed it was cancer just beginning to show itself.

“I been out a few times. Maybe a couple of weeks ago the last time. Why, what’s happened?” Frankie was thinking if he stared at the black spot the cop might notice it and move on. He thinks he’s making me uncomfortable, the shithead.

Well, Frankie,” the cop said, “I’m Detective Hardy and Hazel at the diner says you’ve been dating Leeanna recently, trying to get in her pants. Is that a fact?” The black spot actually moved when he asked a question.

“You saying there’s something wrong with that, Mr. Hardy? You saying you never tried? That ain’t your thing?” Give it back to them, cool, don’t give ‘em a bone. He could feel his mother standing in the doorway to the kitchen and Hardy had nodded at her. The top lip covered the black spot when he pursed his lips.

The eternal white apron, he figured, was wrung in her hands. “What’s the matter, Frankie? What’s going on?”

“Beats me, mom. They haven’t exactly said a thing, ‘cept I’ve been dating a girl they know.” One thing he was sure of, he couldn’t turn around and look at her and that way she had of looking right down through him to the soles of his feet. Since he was a kid.

“Frankie,” she said, the way she had said it a thousand times, something crawling in her voice with arms and legs on it and hands that went searching through his body, pulling at him, always pulling at him.

“Jeezus, mom, I don’t know. I don’t know!” Don’t turn around, he said to himself. Do not turn around! He knew she’d be leaning against the doorjamb, like a laundry bag ready to crumple, all wrinkled and empty. Done it a thousand times, she had. Now it was in her voice.

The cop Hardy, the cop with cancer on his lip, the cop with an ugly black spot that’d make any girl throw up, was staring at him again. “When’s the last time you saw Leeanna, Frankie? The very last time?”

“A couple of days, I guess. Yuh, a couple of days. What the hell is going on?” Behind him he knew his mother was laundry again.

“Well, the trash pick-up was going on this morning in the parks and one of the summer help found some clothes at the edge of the lake, might have floated up on the beach. They were wet, sopping wet. Leeanna’s clothes. Her library card was in a pocket of a pair of dungarees, and a couple of bucks.”

“What the hell does that mean to me?” What the hell is going on, he said to himself, seeing again the short shorts tight in her crotch, coming down off those hips, the black bush of her crotch. Immediately he saw Hazel’s arm pits the way he last caught sight of them. What the hell, this had nothing to do with him. Relax, he said to himself. Relax.

Black Spot came right back at him. “Know a kid named Bobby Brinkley, Frankie?”

Oh, shit, he thought, that kid behind the vacant house, the kid who loved model planes, got his pants down so damn easy he was sure he’d come back for more. “Don’t think I know him, Mr. Hardy. What’s he got to do with finding Leeanna’s clothes by the lake?”

“Funny thing about that, Frankie. He’s Leeanna’s godchild, says you abused him one day behind the old Stott place, and under your porch. Says he told Leeanna a few weeks ago, the only one, and now she’s missing and her clothes have been found at the lake and we figure something’s happened to her. She did not come home last night and the kid told his mother what happened and she came down to see us. Someone said they saw you with Leeanna last night, going down toward the lake.”

Frankie heard his mother gasp and saw one uniformed cop rush to her side. “Frankie, you didn’t,” she said, as she folded empty and wrinkled into the arms of the policeman.

This is crazy, Frankie thought. “I might have seen her for a minute, but she was wearing a pair of short shorts.”

“You have to come down to the station, Frankie. We’ve got to do a lot of talking. Find out a few things. Where you hang out. What you do when you hang out. Who’s with you when you hang out.” For the first time Frankie noticed the thick eyebrows on the man and then realized the wrinkles in his face were deep as ruts and how every now and then he bit at the black spot.

“I didn’t do anything to her.” His mother was out of it behind him and the cop was fanning her face. Frankie could feel her eyes on the soles of his feet. Something was coming all apart but he didn’t know what it was.

“Well, Frankie, there’s the kid and his story, and Leeanna’s missing. Doesn’t look too good from where I’m standing.” The goddamn black spot was out there on his lip big as an ace of spades. If it ain’t cancer, it’s got to be something, Frankie was thinking. Would serve him right.

One cop was still fanning his mother as the other cop put a pair of handcuffs on Frankie’s wrists. The detective with the black spot was walking out the door, across the porch, pointing his finger over one shoulder, pointing toward the street and the cruiser parked at the curb, motioning them away from the house.

Three days later, in a motel room more than fifty miles away, looking at the news for the third day in a row on television, the swimmer nonpareil, splendid diver, possible virgin, schemer and plotter, vengeful godmother Leeanna Brookson finally figured Frankie Plegger, child abuser, womanizer, terrorist, had stewed just about enough in learning his lesson under a genuine threat of homicide, and then some. Maybe this was just the beginning for him. There was a lot of catching up to do, for sure.

She decided it was time to go home.