Fields and pastures cease to exist along the southeast border of Nebraska as the rolling farmland changes to bluffs and ravines dense with trees and foliage. The Missouri River flows through this timberland in its muddy hurry to join the Mississippi and a tent near the river was to be home for Emily Jameson and her family for the next three days.
            “It’ll help if we get away for a few days,” her husband, Matt, had decided. “The weekend people will be gone and we’ll have the park all to ourselves. I’ll fish and you can bring your sewing.”
            She agreed but had left her needlepoint at home. There was no use bringing it when she had a four-month-old and a three-year-old to take care of and she would have to watch them carefully since they were so close to the river.
            Matt had chosen a spot that was separated from the river by a gravel road. An outhouse and a picnic shelter were to the side of their tent and past the shelter a merry-go-round and swing set were aged sentinels against a bluff and the trees and foliage that grew from it.
            Matt had run a hose from a water hydrant by the picnic shelter to an inflatable wading pool so she and the boys could play in the pool and they’d have water close at hand.
            The baby fretted and sucked his fist. Emily picked him up from his car seat and settled back into her lawn chair, unbuttoning her sleeveless cotton shirt and unhooking the front of her nursing bra. The baby settled his head into the crook of her elbow to nurse and she felt the hot electricity of her milk coming in. Clay, the tow-headed three-year-old, was sitting on his haunches by the swing set throwing something into the trees.
            “Clay,” she called. “Come here.”
            Slowly he rose and walked toward her but his head remained turned to look at something behind him. Suddenly he turned around and ran back toward the woods.
            “Come back!” Emily yelled. She stood up and readjusted her shirt, then walked quickly toward the end of the picnic area where Clay had stopped. She saw a ground squirrel dart out of the undergrowth to grab one of the cheerios Clay had thrown.
            Clay saw him too and shrieked, sending the squirrel scurrying back into the protection of leaves and trees.
            “See, Mommy, see,” Clay wriggled with excitement. The baby struggled in her arms and sucked its fist.
            “Clay, if we sit still, it might come out again. Come on, let’s get our lawn chairs.”
            They walked back and got their chairs, Clay’s a miniature one of her own.
            “You have to be quiet,” Emily said.
            “We be quiet?” Clay asked in a hushed tone.
            They set up the chairs and Emily sat down and started nursing the baby, while Clay on tip toe pantomimed quiet and left a trail of cheerios from the bluff to the lawn chairs. The ground squirrel ventured out and took one cheerio and then another. Clay squirmed and clapped his hands over his mouth to suppress the noise that was threatening to come out. The squirrel watched them, contemplating the safety of coming further. It darted forward to get the next bit of cereal and that additional movement proved too much for Clay. He was up and out of his chair with a peal of laughter and the ground squirrel zipped back into the woods.
            “See! See it, Mommy!”
            “I saw it, Clay.”
            “It a mousie?”
            “It’s a ground squirrel.”
            “It mine!” Clay put his hands on his chest.
            “Sit down and see if it comes back.”
            Clay didn’t sit in his chair, but hunched down and started moving forward in a duck walk. Emily closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair while the mosquitoes and gnats buzzed around her. The hot September air smelled of river water tinged with decay.
            “Hope you brought some mosquito repellent with you. They’re bad this time of year, especially being so close to the river,” a man’s gravelly voice said.
            “I did,” Emily replied. She squinted her eyes and saw a man with a felt hat standing by the picnic shelter. Emily heard the patter of dirt clods falling and turned to see that Clay had gone past the swing set and was working his way up the bluff.
            “Don’t go into the woods!” Emily yelled.
            Clay tried to scramble further up the incline when he lost his footing and slid several feet down the embankment. “Owie! Mommy!” He ran to Emily and held out his leg so she could see the scratches on his shin. “Owie,” he snuffled.
            “I told you to come back.”
            “Band-Aid?” Clay asked hopefully.
            “No, it’s not that bad.”
            Clay howled at the reply. Emily got up from her lawn chair interrupting the baby who started to cry, too.
            “What happened?” Matt had come up behind her.
            “Owie,” Clay cried pointing to his shin.
            “He’s crying over the loss of a Band-Aid, not over the loss of skin,” Emily said. “Here,” she said, handing Matt the baby who cried louder. “I’m going to clean Clay up.”
            Emily got a first aid kit out of the back of the pickup cab and cleaned the scratches off with a disinfectant wipe and then poured a paper cup of Kool-Aide from a large cooler. Clay stopped crying once he saw the Kool-Aide but the baby’s cries continued unabated.
            “I think the baby’s hungry,” Matt said.
            “I just nursed him.”
            “He never seems satisfied. Clay wasn’t like this.”
            “Everything is different this time,” Emily said. “Hold him so I can make some sandwiches.” Emily made peanut butter sandwiches and cut up some apples. She put a plastic tablecloth and paper plates on a picnic table in the shelter and poured two more cups of Kool-Aide. “Clay, come eat.” Clay came to the table and looked from his food over to where they had left their lawn chairs. “This food is for you, not the animals.” Emily said.
            Matt offered the fussing baby to Emily but she did not take him. “I’ve got to get some bug repellent on Clay,” Emily said. “The man that was here said the mosquitoes are bad.” Emily went to the pickup and got the lotion out, then got her lawn chair and put it under the shelter before she took the baby.
            “What man?” Matt asked.
            Emily looked around. “He must of left.”
            “Is he fishing along here?” Matt asked.
            “I don’t know; he just said the mosquitoes are bad.” 
            “Well, he’s got that right. And not just mosquitoes, there are clouds of gnats by the river, too.”
            The baby swung its head from side to side and refused to nurse. Emily went back to the pickup, laid the tailgate down, took a pad out of the diaper bag and changed the baby. She rummaged in the bag until she found a pacifier. Emily came back to the lawn chair and put the pacifier in the baby’s mouth. The baby arched its back and struggled and then its eyes started to flutter.
            “I thought you didn’t want to use pacifiers,” Matt said.
            “I changed my mind,” she said.
            Matt poured himself another cup of Kool-Aide. “Maybe we should change our minds about some other things, too.”
            “This trip?” Emily asked.
            “No.” Matt paused. “About you going back to work in January.”
            “I have to go back to work. I only have this semester off.” 
            “Yeah, but think of what we’ll pay in day care.”
            “The money won’t all go to day care,” Emily said.
            “Most of it would. We’d make more money if I worked the swing shift at the manufacturing company.”
            “I want to teach.”
            “You can still teach our kids at home until their old enough to start school. In fact, you could stay at home until we’re done having kids.”
            Emily was silent for a minute. “I don’t think we should have any more. I think we should stop with the boys.”
            Matt’s forehead furrowed. “You said you wanted four kids. I thought we had agreed on that.”
            “Wanting four kids and having four,” Emily’s voice trailed off. She shook her head.
            “But what about your baby girl? You said you wanted at least one girl.”
            Emily didn’t say anything. 
            Matt finished his Kool-Aide and tossed his cup and plate in the nearby trash can. “Anyway, I’ve been talking to one of the guys that run that manufacturing place. They’ll let me work the winter and give me the rest of the time off. He said it would work real well for them because they can get college kids during the summer. It would work for us, too, since I can start when harvest is done and quit in spring when it’s time to plant. And we’d bring in more money that way.”
            “But they’re expecting me back, they need me.”
            “Emily, our kids need you, too. Especially that baby. No one is going to want to watch him anyway, if he doesn’t get over that crying.”
            Emily said nothing and, as if on cue, the baby spit the pacifier out and started crying.
            Matt looked questioningly at Emily. “The doctor was sure it’s not colic?”
            “He said breast fed babies don’t get colic.”
            “Do you think he’s hungry?”
            “I don’t know.” Emily unbuttoned her shirt and tried to get the baby to nurse but the baby just turned its head from side to side.
            Matt stood up. “Well, I’m going back to see if I can’t catch something for supper. Otherwise we’ll be eating peanut butter sandwiches again. Right, sport?” He addressed the last to Clay. Clay looked up from his apple slices, his blond head nodding.
            Matt picked up his fishing gear and walked back toward the river. Emily put the baby in the car seat and held the pacifier in his mouth until he went to sleep. She cleared the table and then took Clay to use the outhouse, holding on to him so he wouldn’t fall in. They came out to find the baby still sleeping.
            “Let’s take a nap,” Emily said.
            “No!” Clay stopped walking.
            “Come on, Clay.” Emily walked ahead and moved the car seat into the tent.
            “No! Pool!” Clay stayed where he was pointing to the wading pool.
            Emily picked Clay up and walked toward the tent.
            “No!” he screamed. 
            “Okay,” Emily whispered, “you can be in the pool, just be quiet or you’ll wake the baby.”
            “We be quiet?” Clay whispered back.
            “Yes.”
            “Pool time?” Clay whispered.
            “Yes, if the water isn’t too cold.”
            Clay covered his hands with his mouth to show he was quiet and took two steps before squealing and running to the pool.
            “Clay, no, get your swim trunks on.” Emily said. She got his swim trunks from the pickup and helped him change. Then she rubbed insect repellent and sun screen on him. Emily gave him a net full of pool toys and then sat down in her lawn chair with her back to the river.
            The water in the pool hadn’t warmed in the heat yet but Clay didn’t seem to mind. He splashed and played and Emily closed her eyes, napping off and on in the chair. She smelled the scent of the river, fresh and muddy at the same time.
            “Your husband catching anything?”
            Emily partially opened her eyes. The man with the felt hat sat on a picnic table.  “He’s not having much luck,” Emily said.
            “The river, she’s not too generous these days. She likes to keep what belongs to her.”
            “The fish?” Emily answered sleepily. “The fish don’t belong to the river.”
            “The fish are hers. Just like that baby in the tent is yours. You wouldn’t want someone to take a hook and pull that baby away from you, would you?”
            “No.” Emily’s face grimaced and she shook her head.
            “The river don’t always like it when you take things from her, either. She feels the same way you do,” the river man said. The baby started to cry inside the tent. “Your baby’s crying.”
            Emily nodded, her eyes closed. “He’s always crying,” she said.
            “You need to wash him in the river. That would cure him. Just wash him in the river and he’d stop crying.”
            The baby cried harder and Emily’s eyes opened completely and she got up and went into the tent. The baby was hot. Emily got a washcloth out of the diaper bag and sat by the wading pool, dipping the washcloth in the water and wiping the baby’s forehead and arms. The baby flailed and cried and she put the washcloth down and rocked him in her arms.
            Clay grabbed the washcloth and scooted across the wading pool. “Mine!”
            Emily went back to the lawn chair, her back toward the river. She put the crying baby down on a blanket and redid her ponytail so her dark hair wouldn’t stick to her damp cheeks and neck. Emily picked up the baby and settled in the lawn chair to nurse. She exhaled when the baby latched onto her breast and stopped crying. Emily leaned her head back and closed her eyes again. Clay splashed and squirted water from a plastic whale. She could feel the cool droplets hit her feet. She wiggled her toes and Clay laughed and did it again.
            Emily burped the baby and switched him to her other breast. Clay put some of his toys outside of the pool and then started pouring water on them with a plastic sprinkling can. The baby continued to nurse and Emily leaned back until the baby’s rhythmic sucking stopped and he clamped his jaws together. Emily’s head jerked forward at the pressure and she looked down. The baby’s wide eyes looked back at her and she could see his chest expand and then he swung his head back and screamed. Emily sat him upright on her lap, her hand supporting his back and saw the welt on his upper arm.
            “Baby mad?” Clay yelled to be heard.
            “Baby is hurt,” Emily said.
            Clay got out of the pool, his hands clutched in worried fists at his chin and came dripping over to see. Emily probed the raised red mark looking for a stinger.
            “Clay, bring me the washcloth,” Emily said above the baby’s screams. She moved the baby to muffle his cries.
            “What the heck happened? I heard the baby from clear down by the river,” Matt walked over to them.
            “Something bit him.”
            Matt took the baby and checked for a stinger. The baby’s entire shoulder was red and the welt on his arm was the size of a quarter.
            “What was it?” Matt asked.
            “I don’t know. I didn’t see it.”
            “Might have been a wasp,” Matt said.
            “Matt, let’s leave.”
            Matt exhaled slowly. “Emily, give it some time. This is supposed to be a vacation.”
            “We need to go home,” Emily’s voiced choked.
            “You know, he can have a bee sting here or he can have it at home. There’s no difference. Remember, we went camping when Clay was a tiny baby and he survived.”
            “It’s not,” Emily stopped, “the same,” she said.
            “He might be better in a couple of hours. Just wait, between his screaming and the great outdoors, maybe he’ll sleep tonight.”
            Emily didn’t reply and the baby’s cries echoed in the shelter.
            “Look, I caught some fish,” Matt said, stroking her shoulder. “I’ll make supper so you can get the baby settled down.”
            Matt got potatoes and carrots out of the back of the pickup along with a bag of charcoal for the grill. Emily kept the washcloth on the baby’s bite and rocked him back and forth in her arms until he fell asleep. Emily put the baby in the car seat. The baby flinched but stayed sleeping. Matt went over and looked at him.
            “See Emily, he’s better.” 
            “That man that was here said if we washed the baby in the river it would stop him from crying so much,” she said.
            “He’s not crying now,” Matt said.
            Emily didn’t reply.
            Matt put the cleaned fish and vegetables in a foil packet. Clay had moved most of the pool water to the dirt and was playing in the mud. Emily washed Clay off and dried him and changed his clothes. Then she took him to the outhouse while Matt put the food on the table and poured water on the hot charcoal.
            They ate supper except for Clay whose head kept falling forward.
            Emily moved the sleeping baby and the car seat into the tent and then wiped Clay’s hands and face. Matt put a pajama shirt on Clay and laid him down on the air mattress. Emily laid down beside him in her clothes and fell asleep.
            Emily woke to the bleat of a horn blaring over and over; it was the baby in the car seat. Clay and Matt were next to her on the air mattress. Emily got the baby out of the car seat and tried to lay him down by her on the air mattress. Clay stirred in his sleep.
            “I think he’s hungry,” Matt said groggily.
            Emily got up and took the baby out of the car seat. She found the diaper bag and changed him under the full moon. She sat down in the lawn chair to nurse but the baby cried harder and she realized she was holding him on the side with the bite. She switched to the other side and his cries subsided but the baby still refused to nurse. Emily found the pacifier and held it in the baby’s mouth; the baby grunted against it but did not cry. The baby struggled in her arms but she held the pacifier in and leaned back, closing her eyes. A warm breeze perfumed with the scent of the river enveloped her.
            “There’s a cure for that baby,” the river man said.
            “What?” Emily asked.
            “Let the river water run over him. It will get all the poison out of his system. He’ll be cleansed.”
            “But river water is dirty,” Emily said.
            “River water cleans. Look at all the debris the river washes away. The river would get the poison out of that bite, out of him.”
            The baby spit the pacifier out and cried. Emily got up and faced her lawn chair toward the river. Emily shifted the baby so the warm air wafting up from the river could penetrate the damp areas where she and the baby had touched. The wind came up and rustled in the branches and she watched the cottonwood and elms moved back and forth, a choir of trees bending as if to pay homage to the body of water that flowed past them. Emily watched, mesmerized by the trees and the moon glinting on the water, and was still looking toward the river when the sun came up the next morning.
            Matt made breakfast and then gathered up his fishing gear. Clay remained in the tent and the baby slept in Emily’s arms. “That baby sure kept us up last night,” Matt said.
            Emily nodded.
            “I think you should take him back to the doctor and see if it’s an ear infection that makes him cry all the time.”
            “It’s the bite,” Emily said.
            “Emily, he cried before he got that insect bite.”
            Emily said nothing.
            “Why don’t you lie down while the baby and Clay are sleeping?” Matt said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He started walking toward the river.
            The baby was wet. Emily laid him down on the air mattress to change him. His face scrunched and he opened his eyes. Emily sat down in her chair facing the river and the baby settled in to nurse. After a while Emily burped the baby and switched to the other breast but the baby swung its head back and screamed. Emily realized she couldn’t hold him on the side with the bite. She sat the crying baby on her lap and looked at his shoulder. The area was red and swollen.
            Clay came out of the tent in his underwear and she put the crying baby in the car seat and took Clay to the outhouse and got him breakfast and let him play in the dirty water of the wading pool. Emily took some of the mud from the wading pool, put it on a washcloth and held it to the baby’s shoulder. Then she put the washcloth on her forehead and closed her eyes and leaned back. She smelled the dank earth of the muddy washcloth.
            “Has to be river water,” the man in the felt hat was standing on the gravel road between her and the river.
            “But it’s helping,” Emily said.
            “It has to be river water. You have to put the baby in the river and let the water wash the poison out of him.”
            “Then he’ll be better?”
            “The river will take care of everything,” the man said.
            A large white boat was churning past and Emily watched it through the frame of tree branches. The boat had two levels, both filled with people and she could hear the occasional laugh and bits of conversation and smelled the scent of barbecue. Emily watched the river even after the boat had past.
            “Emily!” she heard Matt’s voice before her head would make the effort to turn and look at him. “Look at Clay.”
            Emily looked back at the wading pool to see that Clay had covered himself with mud and was watering himself with the sprinkling can.
            “Jeez, I’ve never seen such a dirty kid,” Matt said.
            Emily nodded.
            “And look at you. Is that dirt on your forehead? And on the baby?” Matt asked.
            Emily looked down to see muddy water had left dirty streaks on the baby. “The man said river water will get the poison out.”
            Matt came over to look at his arm. “It does look a little better. I’ll hold him and you can make lunch. Did you smell the food on that boat?” Matt held the baby while Emily made summer sausage sandwiches. The frozen bottles of water they put in the cooler had melted and she took some of them out so they could drink the cold water.
            “Heck of a time to be fishing. Nothing’s biting.”  Matt handed the baby back to Emily.
            “We need to put river water on the baby,” Emily said.
            “You know, the bite just looks so big because he’s so little.”
            Emily didn’t answer; she just looked at the river.
            A brown car with white lettering drove slowly by them and stopped. A middle-aged man in brown shorts and shirt got out of the Game and Parks car and came over.
            “You folks know we’ve got camping areas further north? There’s drinking water and flush bathrooms over there.”
            “Yes sir, we do know,” Matt said. “We’re not going to be here long and I wanted to be close to the river so I could fish.”
            “Happen to have a fishing license on you?” he asked.
            Matt took out his wallet and handed the man his fishing license. The park employee looked at it and then handed it back to Matt. “I know some Jamesons but they’re from Marysville, Kansas.”
            “John and Ellen Jameson?” Matt asked.
            “You related to them?”
            “John and my Dad are first cousins,” Matt answered.
            “You don’t say. I went to school with Ellen.”
            “It’s a small world.”
            “Ain’t it though?” The man took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Are the fish biting?”
            “Not like I’d thought they’d be.”
            “Good thing you brought your family with you to keep you company.”
            “Yep. This is my wife, Emily, our son Clay and the newest edition.”
            The newest edition mewled uncomfortably in Emily’s arms. “Say, would you mind taking a look at something?” Mark asked. “Our baby got some sort of bite.”
            “Sure, be happy to look at it,” the park employee took a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.
            Emily unsnapped the baby’s shirt and pushed it back so the man could see the shoulder.
            “We think maybe it was a wasp or a yellow jacket,” Matt said.
            “You didn’t see it, though?”
            Matt looked at Emily and then spoke for her. “Nope, the baby just started yelling to beat the band and all we found was the welt.”
            “Might of been a spider.”
            “My wife was holding the baby at the time. Don’t you think she would have seen a spider?”
            “Not necessarily. They move fast and there are some pretty nasty ones around here.”
            “You don’t think we should take him to a doctor, do you?” Matt asked.
            The man looked at the bite and felt it with his hand. The baby started to cry in ernest. “It’s hot and swollen but I don’t see anything else. If you see streaks coming from it or a circle that makes the bite look like a bull’s eye, you’d want to get the baby to a doctor straight away. But right now it just looks like a big mosquito bite and, let me tell you, there are some big mosquitoes around here. Course, there’s West Nile now, too, but that takes a while from the time you’re bit to the time symptoms appear.”
            “Some man around here has been telling Emily she needs to wash the baby in the river.”
            The park employee frowned. “I’ve heard of putting mud on bites to get the poison out but I’ve never heard of getting in the river.” He adjusted his hat and chuckled. “At least not the Missouri; that’s just nuts.”
            “Emily, did the man say put mud on the bite or wash the baby in the river?”
            Emily shrugged her shoulders.
            “Is this guy camping here?” the park employee asked. “What does he look like?”
            Matt looked at Emily who didn’t answer. “I think he’s an old guy, isn’t he Emily?” Matt said.
            Emily nodded.
            “Huh. He might be in the far north campgrounds.”
            “Wouldn’t that be a long way from here?” Matt asked.
            “It would. But just last month we had a couple in their 70’s who would hike all over this place. Probably in better shape then me but all the same, I like to keep an eye on the older folks who come to stay. ‘Specially when we’re going to be having some weather.”
            “We sure could use the rain,” Matt said.
            “That we could and if the forecast is right we’ll probably just have to take some thunder and lightning along with it.” He put his glasses back in his shirt pocket. “You folks enjoy your stay.” The man tilted his hat to Emily and went back to his car. They watched him get in and Matt waved as he drove off.
            “We need to wash the bite,” Emily said tonelessly.
            “Emily, it’ll be okay. Did you hear the man? He said it might be a mosquito bite.”
            Emily didn’t reply.
            “Okay,” Matt said. “The baby’s kept us up, the fish aren’t biting, and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. I’ll fish the rest of the day and tonight and see if I can’t catch some big cat. Clay and I will take the pup tent and sleeping bags and we’ll camp about a quarter of a mile down. You and the baby can have the air mattress and the big tent. Tomorrow morning we’ll head home before the weather turns and you can take the baby to the doctor.”   
            “You’ll watch Clay?” Emily asked.
            “He can fish with me.”                 
             Matt cleaned Clay up and gathered everything together. They set off down the gravel road, Clay hopping with excitement and not even complaining about the backpack he had to carry.
            Emily sat in her lawn chair facing the river and held the baby who alternately cried and slept. When she stood up, she was damp from the heat and humidity and she changed the baby and then put on her pajamas, an ankle length white cotton gown with a ruffle at the bottom.
            As the sun set, the wind came up and billowed her nightgown out and then laid it down against her legs like an unseen bridal attendant. The wind moaned through the branches and the trees swayed to and fro beckoning her to them. Emily took the baby and crossed the gravel road and followed a path down to the river. A tree, stripped of all its bark, lay partly submerged in the water and Emily held onto the stub of a branch and eased into the water. The water was warm right by the shore but inches away tendrils of cooler water licked at her legs. Emily found footholds on the stones and held the branch with one arm and the baby with the other, her back braced against the hard blocks of stone that comprised the river bank. Emily lowered her arm with the baby into the choppy water.  The baby sucked its cheeks and looked wide eyed at Emily. The moon reflected on each small wave in the river, making it look like the river was full of light. The river man laughed or maybe it was the sound of the water slapping against the stones; Emily couldn’t tell.
            The water pushed and pulled, bobbing Emily up and down. A cloud covered the moon and Emily relaxed her arm that held the baby. The arm became weightless. There was no crying only the lapping sound of the water against the bank, against the tree, against her. The icy fingers of current pulled at Emily and when she let go the only sound was the lapping of the river.