“You know, Ohmie,” Blado began, “It’s a good thing we got two of everything, two hands, two arms, two legs…”

“And a better thing we only have one mouth,” Ohmie interrupted, whispering. “You do know that we’re hidden for a reason?”

“Oh, yeah. Waiting for a deer to come to drink outta the river. Good thing we got two ears to hear it comin’.”

Ohmie shook his head.

“River’s still up some,” Blado commented. “I can see…”

“With your two eyes,” Ohmie quipped.

Blado paused for a moment, and then nearly laughed out loud, instead chuckling to the point of shaking the branches they had assembled to fashion a blind.

A storm of historic proportion had lingered for days to the north, displaying lightning shows day and night for nearly a week. The swollen river backed up the creeks in the various hollows throughout the region. The river had filled with trees of all sizes, floating downstream with all manner of flotsam. Had anyone been witness, they would have seen the occasional animal carcass float by. There was no telling what drifted past beneath the surface.

“Ohmie…”

“You know, Blado, just because you only have one mouth, that doesn’t mean it is supposed to work twice as hard.”

Blado held his gut with both hands in his effort to control himself. “You always were good at math,” he finally said in praise of his smaller friend.

Ohmie just shook his head.

Soon enough, once Blado couldn’t think of anything to say, he lowered his head and began a mid-morning nap. Sitting up, his chin at his chest, Blado slept quietly enough that Ohmie didn’t disturb him.

It wasn’t but moments later that Ohmie saw a three-year-old buck inch his way to the river… the wrong side of the river. Ohmie considered whether to allow him his drink. But then he thought about May and the kids, nothing but ground hickory nuts the past two days. Ohmie slowly edged from the blind. The deer froze in place, as did Ohmie. Ohmie outwaited the young buck. The beast of a deer had probably never before seen a human. And as long as Ohmie stood still, it likely wouldn’t see him, either. As soon as the deer reached the water and lowered his head to drink, Ohmie loosed his spear, flinging it with a sweep of his arm and snap of his wrist.

The wind affected Ohmie’s aim, altering the trajectory enough to slide off the deer’s rib cage and slice into its gut. Ohmie’s hope was the deer’s neck, where the spear tip had a chance at blood veins or arteries, the windpipe, or the vertebrae. The injured animal bounded into the forest some fifty yards beyond.

Ohmie’s options were to forget both the deer and the spear, or attempt a river crossing to track and pursue the animal that would feed his and Blado’s families for many days. The river was moving along swiftly, but swimmable as long as he avoided the debris.

The water was ice cold. Normally on the cool side, the recent rain might have begun as hail. There’d been no sun to warm the river since the storm’s beginning. Whatever the case, it was far colder than normal. By the time he reached the opposite shore, only fifty or sixty yards across, but easily twice that with the downstream drift, he was blue from cold. He ran to his spear up the riverbank and then followed the blood trail to the forest. He found the fallen animal a couple hundred yards in. Seeing how large the buck was, he wished he’d swallowed his aggravation at Blado and wakened him.

Field-dressed and without his head, the buck weighed as much as Ohmie could manage. He got to the forest edge and began shouting for Blado.

Unfortunately, Blado had awakened and had gone in search of Ohmie, first upstream, which was also upwind. Blado didn’t hear Ohmie’s shouting.

Ohmie quickly built a makeshift raft for the deer from fallen branches and bits of vine, figuring it to at least keep the carcass from sinking to the bottom. For the first several feet, Ohmie was able to walk with the current, angling his raft to cross over at the next bend in the river. What Ohmie had not figured on was an unseen log beneath the surface. More than a log, it was what remained of a tree trunk, complete with long nubs of branches. The submerged tree was rolling, spinning its way down the river. The broken limbs churned as the trunk spun its way downstream.

Feeling one of the limbs, a stub of a limb as thick as his leg, Ohmie jerked away from it, unsure exactly what it was. The direction of his jerk perfectly coincided with the tree’s motion to capture Ohmie’s ankle in the crook of the limb and trunk. Ohmie’s choice was to resist and suffer a broken leg, or roll with the tree, letting it drag him under. Holding his breath, Ohmie prepared for the spin, wondering whether his weight would trap him between the tree and the river bottom. He felt the rocky riverbed, grateful there’d been room between it and the tree for him. Finally surfacing, Ohmie had time for one quick breath before being dunked as the tree seemed to hurry its way with him at the apogee. It didn’t seem fair to spend so long beneath the surface, and so little above.

Ohmie could neither free himself, now tangled in several limbs, or even see the predicament his foot was in. Before he could fill his lungs a second time he was under. Then the tree hit a submerged boulder, stopping its hideous spin. The river’s current pushed the tree sideways, making an underwater dam. Ohmie began to be peppered and bombarded by debris of every nature as his mind suddenly turned from his bound foot and ankle to May and his kids. Ohmie thought about Blado’s ridiculous redundancy argument: two hand, two arms, two legs. Well two lungs were not going to help. They were both going to drown together. He felt them ready to burst. The pressure to exhale and draw in lungs full of water was overwhelming. His head felt as if it would explode if he didn’t get a breath of air. His whole body was screaming for air.

And then he couldn’t think about his lungs anymore. He tried to reach for his foot, but a limb at his chest kept his arms from anything but weak flailing. He lost precious energy untangling his hide vest from a limb. With a last fury, Ohmie opened his eyes in an effort to try to see a remedy. What he saw was his vision narrow to a tunnel, blackness closing his vision to a pinpoint and then blackness. He felt his lungs expand into his throat, demanding air. Finally, his body took control, exhaling… and immediately filling his lungs with the icy water.

Trudging downstream, wondering how much farther he would go, knowing that it would get dark before he made it home, Blado decided on one more bend in the river. Either one more bend, or one more tributary stream, whichever came first.

Mostly, Blado was looking for Ohmie’s footprints, but with the rocky riverbank, he didn’t really expect to see them. He just hoped. He was sure, though, that Ohmie had not gone back home. He would have seen those tracks. Ahead, he wondered how beaver could possibly have made a dam under these conditions. With only a little more focus, he saw a human foot extending from the water: Ohmie’s.

“O-Oohmie!” Blado splashed and fell his way to Ohmie, more falling and clawing his way than splashing. Reaching him, and carefully extricating the foot, Blado let out a gasping howl that was neither a call, nor a cry, but some primordial wail.

Blado knew that Ohmie was dead. The time it took for him to get to the corpse and then get him loose was longer than anyone could hold their breath. After several minutes of untangling, one troublesome limb pinning Ohmie’s chest that Blado had to cut off with his knife, he was able to lift Ohmie from the tree. It was several more minutes before Blado could get him to the riverbank where Blado collapsed from near exhaustion.

Knowing that the only thing he could do was to take Ohmie’s body home to May, Blado grabbed an ankle and a wrist, snatching Ohmie up to sling him over his shoulders. Blado swung Ohmie's corpse skyward. Ohmie’s wiry frame sailing higher than anticipated, Blado yanked it back down to his shoulders, jerking it down before it went flying clear across Blado’s shoulders. Immediately, water cascaded down Blado’s arm and chest, water forced from Ohmie’s lungs. In a convulsive spring-like action, Ohmie’s chest expanded, drawing air into the still somewhat water-logged lungs. By then Blado had Ohmie on the ground face down, pounding him on his back.  

+++

“Hey, Ohmie,” May said as Ohmie trudged into their cave. Unseen by May, Blado watched as Ohmie made it safely to May’s arms. “No luck, today, huh?” she asked.

“Not much, maybe tomorrow,” Ohmie replied. “Lucky I had Blado along, though.”

“Oh?” May said.

Ohmie merely hugged May closer.