Sykes smiled good-naturedly and waited for his turn to use the can of repellent.

"I bet you won't believe this," the deputy said, "but it's been so dry here on occasion that I seen a catfish walking down the levee carrying his own canteen."

Sykes's eyes crinkled at the corners, then he walked ahead of us into the gloom, his loafers sinking deep into the wet sand.

"That boy's a long way from his Hollywood poontang, ain't he?" the deputy said behind me.

"How about putting the cork in the humor for a while?" I said.

"What?"

'The man grew up down South. You're patronizing him."

"I'm wha-"

I walked ahead of him and caught up with Sykes just as he stepped out of the willows into a shallow, water-filled depression between the woods and a sandbar. The water was stagnant and hot and smelled of dead garfish.

"There," he said. "Right under the roots of that dead tree. I told y'all."

A barkless, sun-bleached cypress tree lay crossways in a sandbar, the water-smooth trunk eaten by worms, and gathered inside the root system, as though held by a gnarled hand, was a skeleton crimped in an embryonic position, wrapped in a web of dried algae and river trash.

The exposed bone was polished and weathered almost black, but sections of the skin had dried to the color and texture of desiccated leather. Just as Sykes had said, a thick chain encased with rust was wrapped around the arms and rib cage. The end links were fastened with a padlock as wide as my hand.

I tore a willow branch off a tree, shucked off the leaves with my Puma knife, and knelt down in front of the skeleton.

"How do you reckon it got up under those roots?" Sykes said.

"A bad hurricane came through here in '57," I said. "Trees like this were torn out of the ground like carrots. My bet is this man's body got caught under some floating trees and was covered up later in this sandbar."