He felt his own heart beat once he touched her feverish body.
She closed her eyes and played dead.
He stopped.
“Why did you stop?”
He didn’t know.
The sun sank into the water, its reflection making reddish flakes on the surface.
Piroshka started to rock the boat.
“Hey!”
“Ah, you’re scared. You’re scared of everything. Scared to go to America. Scared of cowboys and Indians. Scared of Russians. Scared they might shoot you at the border. You’re scared of dying. I’m not.”
She kept rocking the boat and the reddish flakes jostled without reason or rhyme. Her cattail sword fell into the water and floated away, and she didn’t care. If she would fall into the water and drown, he was supposed to save her, and if he couldn’t they’d both drown.
“You know I can’t swim,” he said.
The rain and
