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Prologue and Return The spotlight from a barge searching for the bend fidgets along the riverbank. A heron’s tar-gargling cry recedes into fog while an armadillo wobbles through the thicket like a lost child. A snapping turtle snatches the leg of a mallard—wings slap the water like oars, trying to pull free from the unseen snag. In the pit lined with creek stones, flames gnaw on split hickory, hawk out sparks like seeds. Downhill lie the spine and ribs of my great-grandfather’s ferryboat I once pretended was the carcass of an alligator gar, the swivel chair with straps that harnessed him while he rowed—his legs crushed in a dogtrot mine when he was a boy. His claim: we were spawned in the sloughs, in logjams and stump rows, under hyacinth and cattail, and that’s where we all return, to be swallowed slowly with each year’s leaf fall and rot. 3 ...

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