Check out the first chapter of Running the River: Secrets of the Sabine, from the fine Texas writer Wes Ferguson: A man shot at us our first day on the river. Of course he did. You expect that sort of thing to happen on the Sabine.
I met Jacob at his father’s house early that morning. He hitched the boat to his truck, and we drove south and east into the border country where Texas blends into the forests and swamps of Louisiana. Jacob’s father, Henry, rode shotgun. You could tell he was nervous the way he chattered against the quiet. The boat belonged to him, and he was loaning it to us, but Henry swore he didn’t care about the aluminum sixteen-footer. He envisioned the gun-toting types who live along the river, the snags that capsize little boats, and the bewhiskered catfish lurking in underwater dens, and he couldn’t help worrying about his adult son. For distraction, he told jokes.
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