But most of the rapids were now behind us. As Woody predicted, the valley started to open up and spit us out. The mountains were retreating from us on both sides, as the Keele River split into a million channels.
“Welcome to the Flats,” Woody said during a float-n-bloat of gummy bears and brownies.
The change came suddenly, like somebody had swapped a screensaver or flipped a Web page on me when I wasn’t looking.
Back in the mountains, I’d sometimes felt claustrophobic, like they were just another set of walls hemming me in. But at least the mountains were solid, and it seemed things had been that way forever. In the mountains, I felt I knew where I stood and had something to hold onto. No matter how crazy the current, the river always obeyed the lay of the land.
Down here in the Flats, it was the opposite. We’d entered a shifty world of willows, wind, and water where the river seemed to do whatever the hell it wanted. As we drifted along with our canoes lashed together by our dangling legs, the water poured around us, tearing at the sandy banks, spilling away in all directions, disappearing in a chaos of islands.
From here to Guatemala, it was the loneliest, most exposed place I’d ever seen. Everything seemed to be falling apart, and I got the strange feeling that I might be next. “How do you know which way is out?” I asked Woody.
“All channels lead out eventually, if by out you mean the Mackenzie River and civilization.”
“Whatever.”
“The better question is, how long do you want to spend getting out of here?”
“I’m ready to get out now,” Morris said. “By that I mean I’m fixed. Therapy’s over. Beam me up.”
Carrie snatched the bag of gummy bears from him. “Not so fast, Morris,” she said. “There’s still the final exam.”
“When’s that?” I asked.
“Usually when you least expect it,” Woody said. “You’ll be evaluated on how well you can hold it together when the river pushes all your buttons. How well you can contribute to—”
“The greater glory of the team,” I said. “Right. We get it, Woody. But you still haven’t told us which way is out.”
“Some channels will float you through to the Mackenzie easy as a conveyor belt. Others shrink to a trickle around the next bend, and you’ll be dragging your canoe out of here. For days, actually.”
“Been there, done that,” Obie said. “Enough dragging.”
“Good, then,” Woody said, lifting his leg out of our canoe. “It’s therefore critical that we stick close together, that we always keep within shouting distance of each other.”
“Go, team!” Carrie said, and our flotilla broke apart into three crews, bobbing within a paddle-whack of each other.
I stared at Carrie as she paddled so strong and steady in the bow of Woody’s canoe. I was remembering the first time I heard her say that. Go, team! That day, centuries ago, when I rolled into Camp Lifeboat blindfolded to the world.
Who was that kid? I wondered.
Then, even more baffling: Who am I now?
FLIPPED
After another night of heavy rain, the Keele was extra muddy. The day before, it had looked like creamy tea. This morning it was chocolate milk. The water was so thick with silt, we could hear it hissing under our canoe, like it was scratching to get in and sink us. The water had risen so much overnight that we had to wolf down a cold breakfast and clear off the island where we’d camped before it disappeared underwater. The river seemed more muscular this morning, more menacing. It was choked with logs that had washed down from the mountains while we slept.
Woody had stuck three of us together, “for some final polishing work,” he said. This time he put Morris in the stern, Alyssa up front and me as “mojo”—the useless middle guy who can’t steer, can’t navigate, can’t do anything but paddle. I normally hated being mojo where, as Carrie says, “all you can control is your attitude.” But, between Obie snoring and the random crash of slumping banks, I’d had a crappy sleep. So I was glad to zone out and leave the driving to Morris. In this current, we barely needed to paddle, let alone steer. I even closed my eyes, falling into the mellow groove of my paddle-strokes. One-two-three, one-two-three …
I could’ve gone on like that for hours. As long as Morris kept us slotted in behind Woody, riding one of his conveyor belts to the Mackenzie, what could go wrong?
A lot, actually.
It started with machine-gun fire. Above the hissing current, I heard a sudden rat-a-tat-tat sound on the water right beside us. I opened my eyes to see a trickle of small stones ripping through the surface. I looked up. My breath stopped. We were paddling under a crumbling cliff of sand that could go any second.
I spotted the two other canoes way across the channel. I spun around and saw Morris lying back on the stern deck, his paddle dangling in the water. “Jesus Christ, Morris, wake up! That thing’s gonna go!”
“What thing?” he said, looking around like the stoner that he was.
I pointed my paddle at the cliff above us. “That!” I yelled, and a big hunk splooshed right beside us, almost beaning Alyssa.
She screamed like it was the end of the world.
“Don’t scream!” I said, in a screaming whisper. “You’ll bring the whole friggin’ thing down on us. Just paddle!”
Morris kicked up a rooster tail behind the boat. Alyssa paddled like I’d never seen her. I dug and dug at the water until every muscle in my body was on fire. More hunks of sand crashed around us like we were under mortar attack. One biggie nailed me square on the back, almost knocking the wind out of me. “PADDLE!” I yelled.
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” Morris shouted.
Woody madly waved his paddle, signaling Left! Left!
“¡Jesucristo!”
“What?” Alyssa said.
“They’re turning!”
I heard shouting from the other boats but didn’t catch a word of it. I whimpered like a kid when I saw they were already committed to a new channel where most of the current was going.
And we were not.
So many channels. We’d never find them if we got separated.
Woody’s warning about the Flats stormed into my head. It’s critical that we stick close together … Always keep within shouting distance of each other …
I looked back at the cliff as a car-sized hunk of dirt peeled off and slammed into the water a paddle-length from Morris. The wave swallowed our stern and flooded the boat with chocolate milk.
Alyssa jerked her paddle up as ice-water drowned her feet. The paddle slipped from her fingers into the river. She lunged for it, almost dumping us. I slapped a high brace on the opposite side, barely stopping the canoe from dumping.
“Jesus, Alyssa! Don’t do that!”
I went to grab her paddle but the current had already torn it away.
I yanked out the spare and shoved it at her. “Paddle!” I yelled.
The extra weight of water turned our canoe into a floating brick. “Left! Left!” I shouted.
“I can’t …” Morris yelled. “I can’t turn! Help me turn, damn it!”
“We gotta catch them before—”
There was another crash behind us as half the cliff gave way. The second wave hit us broadside and flipped us over like a bathtub toy.
I smashed my head on a floating log when I came to the surface. Our flipped canoe was already headed downstream and I couldn’t see either Alyssa or Morris. I thrashed my way over to it, my muscles turning to ice.
I managed to catch the canoe and flop my body over it. Just downstream I saw the bobbing heads of my crewmates.
Last thing I saw of the other canoes was Woody’s paddle waving high in the air before disappearing behind a wall of willows.
IN THE POCKET
I can’t say how far we drifted. Or for how long.
Hang on for three days and three nights.
That’s what Woody said to do if our canoe flipped. In this frigid water, we’d all be dead lon
g before that. But we got Woody’s point and hung on, starfish style, with our arms linked over the canoe’s red belly. After much cursing and spluttering, we concluded that our canoe was impossible to steer. All we had to do was stay alive until we crashed into something solid or got close enough to shore to make a dash for it.
Alyssa’s teeth got rattling so bad I could hear them over the rushing water. Morris and I tried to boost her onto the canoe so she could lie in the sun and warm up.
Bad plan.
The canoe couldn’t hold her and we got totally soaked all over again.
I felt Alyssa’s grip loosening by the minute. I glanced across the hull at Morris and could tell he felt it, too. It took all our strength to hang on so she wouldn’t get torn away by the current like her paddle.
I began to space out, getting hypothermic myself, when my feet scraped the gravel bottom. The current had carried us toward a little island. But not close enough. On this course, we’d drift right past it.
I got an idea. “Let’s flip it!”
“You crazy?” Morris said. “I’m gonna swim for it.”
“And kiss the boat goodbye?”
“Just pull it behind you.”
“Upside down? You know that’s nuts.”
But Morris was already flailing for the island.
“So much for teamwork!” I yelled after him.
Morris didn’t look like much of a swimmer to me but, at that moment, I had other things to worry about. Alyssa was on the downstream side of the canoe. With Morris gone, I could barely hold her. Her lips were blue. Her skin all pasty.
“You okay, Alyssa?”
“Just let me go,” she said. “I’ll be all right. I’m almost …”
“What, Alyssa? What?” I realized I needed to keep her talking.
“I’m almost … almost home,” she said, barely audible above the surging water.
My feet scraped bottom again. “Try to stand up, Alyssa! You gotta try!”
She tried. She stood. The canoe bowled her over. She disappeared.
Never get downstream of a dumped canoe. Woody’s voice in my head again.
“Alyssa! Alyssa!”
Water gurgling around the canoe.
“Alyssa!”
A raven swooped over the canoe, looking for dead things to eat.
“ALYSSA!”
“Help!” came a muffled voice.
I still couldn’t see her.
“Ian! Under here!”
“Where?”
“The canoe! I can’t breathe!”
She’s in the air pocket!
I groped under the canoe. I found her thighs, her arm, her hand. She clamped onto mine.
“Just take a deep breath!” I shouted. “I’ll pull you out!”
“I can’t breathe!”
“You can! Don’t let go of me!”
“Get me out of here!”
“Ready, one, two, three … Big breath!”
I heard knocking from inside. Either that signaled she was ready or she was drowning. I reached under with both arms, wrapped them around her waist, and pulled her toward me. She popped up and out of the river like a breaching whale.
“Thanks,” she said as her body went limp in my arms.
The canoe was taking off again. The river wanted it. Wanted me. Wanted everything in this valley.
Getting shallower.
I tried to prop Alyssa on her feet. This motion triggered a sudden flashback of helping Sofi learn to walk when she was still a diaper brat.
My family. Will I ever see them again?
“Can you stand up? Alyssa, can you walk to the island?”
She shook her head and gave me a weak smile.
Of all the places to see Alyssa’s first smile!
The canoe was drifting out of reach.
Alyssa was drifting out of consciousness.
“Morris! Morris, you shit, where are you? MORRIS!”
I felt a hand on my back. Not Alyssa’s.
“Give her to me,” Morris said. “Get the fucking boat.” Morris hoisted Alyssa up on his brawny shoulders, locked her into a perfect fireman’s carry, and stumbled to shore.
THE ISLAND
It wasn’t much of an island. A shoal was more like it, and it wouldn’t be around for long. The river wanted to claim this, too. Nothing but a strip of river rocks and sand, a few scrawny willow bushes, and a fringe of battered driftwood. But it was dry, the sand was hot, and the sun was blazing.
Once our canoe was safely pulled up, Morris and I did a quick inventory of stuff that survived the dumping. The good news: we still had one paddle and all the gear we’d strapped into our boat that morning, including the hatchet. The bad news: the canoe with a mojo paddler always carried the least stuff. So no food barrel, no tent.
I looked up at Morris. “No food or shelter. But hey, we’ve got each other.”
“To eat, you mean?”
I bit my tongue. After all the shit this guy had put me through at school, online, back at camp, I refused to laugh. “May the toughest cannibal win.”
“Deal.”
Alyssa, who’d gone off for a pee, appeared over the side of the canoe, clutching a mini barrel. “Finders keepers, eh?”
I noticed her lips were still bluish but her speech was much clearer. Her Husky eyes, hazel and blue, were brighter than I’d ever seen them. “Where the hell did you find that?”
Alyssa pointed her chin at a pile of driftwood. “In those logs.”
“Cool,” I said. “Must’ve floated downriver after we dumped.”
Morris grabbed it and shook it. “What’s in it?”
“Carrie’s secret stash of goodies,” I said.
Alyssa grabbed it back. “Like in the hot springs?”
I nodded, suddenly feeling a hit of hunger.
“Well?” said Morris. “Let’s eat.”
We talked about an escape plan all through lunch. Two plans, actually.
Plan A: stay put and wait for a rescue. We’d already spread out our orange tarp and piled rocks around it. Between that and our bright red canoe, a pilot would have to be blind drunk to miss us.
Plan B: paddle out. Just carve a second paddle from some driftwood, then slot back into the main current. Though Woody had told us dick about the route, we knew it wasn’t far to the Mackenzie River. Alyssa’s home turf. She could steer us back to civilization.
Plan A looked pretty good to us that sunny afternoon. Lie around on the hot sand, waiting for a rescue boat or chopper to pick us up.
Surely by now, Woody would have called for help on the satellite phone.
So, after inhaling a bunch of dates, Nutella-smeared crackers, and Oreo cookies, I stripped down to my gonch, flung my wet clothes at a willow bush, and flopped onto the sand.
The three of us became lizards, basking on the sand, alone in our thoughts.
Alyssa crouched in her default fetal pose that used to scare me in camp but, out here, looked chill.
Morris flicked sand at a spider that kept popping out of a piece of driftwood.
I mostly watched the river, wondering how it could be out to kill you one minute, then singing to the sunshine the next.
I settled deeper into the sand and focused on the water. I realized that after weeks of dragging, drifting, shooting, and paddling this river, I’d never really looked at it. The boiling patterns on the surface. The silent bubbles drifting by. The twisted reflections of clouds, trees, and mountains. And through it all, the river just kept running, changing every second but always there, always the same.
I’d never really listened to it either, the way Magno would if he’d been sitting there beside me on the sand. I missed Magno. I missed my music, the way we used to listen to it. Like I was listening now to this river. Magno called it “deep listening.”
I discovered voices in the river, whispering, laughing, humming, shouting. Not like that crazy creek on my solo. This was different. This was real. I discovered music, too. Catchy rhythms, pulsing
grooves, hints of a melody I once loved.
The river became a screen, reflecting nature’s non-stop stream of life.
Live streaming—for real!
I had to laugh out loud.
“You okay?” Alyssa asked.
“Huh? Yeah. Just bushed, I guess.”
I looked back at the river, as if I’d interrupted an important conversation, a lesson.
The river latched onto me, looked back at me.
Something inside cracked open, like Diadora’s adobe hut, like my father’s walls after the earthquake, like that cliff of sand that almost killed us.
Grietas en el alma. Cracks in my soul.
I heard echoes of exploding mountains, Diadora’s sobs, marching army boots. I heard chanting students, Monica’s bubbly laugh, hailstones on a car roof. I heard Togo’s echoing bark, the camp alarm, and that eerie wail whooshing down the valley.
I shuddered as three worlds collided inside of me. Guatemala, Calgary, and here, now.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of huge yoga breaths, like Magno taught me.
One, two … one, two …
I calmed down. I wiggled my bare toes in the hot sand. Morris’s spider crawled up my arm. I lightly brushed it off.
Part of me could stay by this river forever.
Alyssa was first to break the silence. There was that smile again. Incredible! “That was touch and go out there, eh, boys?”
Morris and I looked at each other and shrugged at the exact same moment. Then, as much as I fought it, we burst into laughter.
“No, really,” Alyssa said. “You kinda saved my life.”
“It was worth it,” Morris said.
“Go, team!” I said in my best Carrie voice.
RED DOG
The shift to Plan B—paddle out—happened fast. After kicking around that dinky island for another day, watching the wind pick up and the ceiling come down, we had no choice.
“There’s no friggin’ way they’d fly in this stuff,” Alyssa said, looking up at a thick blanket of clouds that almost touched the treetops.
“So why not just wait for a boat?” I said.
Alyssa shook her head. “In this wind? Forget it.”
Morris pointed to the whitecaps marching up the river. “It’s not so bad out there. We’ve paddled in worse shit.”
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