The Boats Never Touched Land
The Day Everlenn Shot Him
The bayou was quiet that afternoon, heavy with heat and dragonflies. The water rolled slow beneath the boats, green above and clear below, carrying reflections like secrets.
Everlenn sat at the edge of a pale cream-colored boat with one leg crossed over the other, her pearls cool against her throat. Men had always watched her the way people watched storms gathering over water — beautiful until dangerous.
The first man loved her like possession.
At least that was what it became.
When she first met him, he spoke gently, dressed sharply, his dark suit pressed clean despite the Louisiana heat. He carried himself like a man who believed the world should move when he spoke. At first, Everlenn mistook intensity for devotion.
She let him drift beside her boat for weeks.
But she never let him touch her.
Then came the second man.
A handsome man in a cream-colored suit with kind eyes and an easy smile. He listened more than he talked. When he looked at Everlenn, it did not feel like being trapped beneath someone’s hand. It felt like shade in summer.
The bayou carried gossip faster than current.
Soon enough, the first man found them together beneath the cypress trees, their boats nearly touching as laughter drifted over the water.
“What is this?” he shouted.
Everlenn stood slowly.
“You don’t own me.”
Something changed in his face.
Whatever softness had once lived there hardened into something sharp and ugly.
The second man stepped forward.
“Go home,” he warned.
But rage had already outrun reason.
The gunshot cracked across the bayou.
Birds exploded from the trees.
A second shot splintered wood beside Everlenn’s feet.
The second man grabbed her arm.
“Get down!”
And then, somehow, her daughters were there.
Two little girls crouched low in the boat, wide-eyed and trembling as the water rocked beneath them.
Everything inside Everlenn changed.
The fear left first.
Then mercy.
She reached beneath the seat and wrapped her fingers around the shotgun hidden there.
The first man raised his weapon again.
Everlenn fired.
The blast echoed across the bayou.
Silence followed.
His body collapsed backward into his boat beneath the afternoon sun.
Nobody moved.
Not the birds.
Not the water.
Not even the wind.
Only the daughters breathed.
Then, as dreams do, the world shifted.
They were underwater.
The bayou had become clear as glass around them. Sunlight spilled through the surface in golden ribbons. Everlenn’s dark curls floated around her face while strands of pearls drifted weightlessly beside her.
The girls stared at her.
Scared now.
Confused.
Everlenn pulled them close.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
One daughter reached for the loose pearls floating through the water.
Everlenn smiled softly.
“Hang cuff her with them,” she said gently. “Make her pretty again.”
Above them, somewhere beyond the water, the world waited.
But beneath the surface there was only silence.
A mother.
Her daughters.
And the truth of what she had done.
The boats still floated above them.
And the boats never touched land.