Oh no you don’t. He turned onto his back and stroked hard toward shore, floating her near his chest, so lost in the rhythm of pull and breath and kick that he didn’t realize he was there until he reached back and hit coarse grit instead of cold water. He rolled to his knees and half dragged, half carried the old lady onto the grass. He pinched her nose, tilted her head back, and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Blow. Breath. Blow. Breath.

He heard the scrape of the rowboat’s keel and then Shaun was there, falling to his knees on the other side of the old lady’s head. He pushed against Russ’s shoulder. “Let me take a turn, man,” he said. “You need to get a breath for yourself.” Russ nodded. He watched as Shaun picked up his rhythm, and then Russ let himself collapse into the grass.

He heard a gargling cough and shoved himself out of the way as Shaun rolled the old lady to her side. She gasped, choked, and then vomited up a startling quantity of water. She started to cry weakly. He met Shaun’s eyes over her shoulder. Shaun spread his hands and shrugged. Now what?

Russ staggered back onto his feet. Curled up on her side, weeping, the woman didn’t look scary anymore, just old and lost. “I think we ought to get her to the hospital,” Russ said. “Run up the trail and see if she parked a car beside the road.”

Swinging wide around the tiny cemetery, Shaun loped to the overgrown path and disappeared from view. Russ returned to the rowboat and dragged it up onto the grass as far as he could. He retrieved his jeans-stinking of beer-and his sneakers, and had just finished getting dressed when Shaun ran back down the trail.

“ ’Sup there,” he panted, pointing toward the road. “Keys in the ignition and all.”

“Good.” Russ knelt by the old woman and carefully pulled her into a sitting position. “Ma’am? Can you walk? What’s your name?”