by Kirk Landers
“Come on!” he yelled. The effort made him cough. He gestured for her to get in the solo canoe. She wouldn’t let go of the tandem.
Chaos could stand it no longer. He dived into the water, splashing Pender and the woman. Pender saw it, figured Chaos was going to die out there and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it. He wanted to hit the khaki woman as hard as he could just for putting everyone’s life at risk and for being an asshole to boot, but that was just a panic reaction and he swallowed it. He grabbed her nearest hand and pried her fingers from the gunnel, transferred the hand to the gunnel of the solo boat.
“Other hand!” he ordered. But the woman’s eyes stared blankly to the heavens, and her knuckles turned white, one hand frozen to one canoe, the other, to the second canoe.
“Motherfucker!” Pender swore. Another coughing fit followed. He reached for the other hand, pried it free, and guided it to the solo boat. She gripped it like a vice, body rigid.
Pender tried to push her up and over the gunnel, into the boat, but she resisted and he could hardly budge her. “Come on, lady!” he yelled, barely able to finish the sentence before the coughing started. She glanced at him for a moment, then heavenward again. “Come on, pull up!”
She gave a tentative tug on the gunnel, hardly rising in the water. Pathetic. But at least she wasn’t resisting. Her husband saw what Pender was trying to do, swung weakly to her side and spoke directly into her ear. He nodded to Pender. They both braced with one hand on the gunnel, the other on her butt and pushed her up. She balanced precariously on the gunnel, half in, half out, the canoe rolling radically on its side, inches from capsizing. Pender summoned one final surge of energy and pushed again. It worked. She tumbled into the canoe. She screamed in pain as her body came to rest awkwardly, her feet and legs atop the pack in the forward section of the canoe, her head and shoulders thumping into the seat and the thwart just behind it.
Pender kicked himself higher in the water to look over the gunnel. She was struggling weakly and moving her mouth, not serious about changing her situation. He didn’t have the strength to fight her anymore. She’d make it or she wouldn’t.
The khaki woman’s husband was done, so weak he lost his grip on the canoe and drifted away, thrashing for a moment, finally getting onto his back, floating, waiting for death. Pender and Annette exchanged grimaces, knowing they were deep in the danger zone. He paused beside her, yelling, “If that bitch manages to capsize the boat, cut it loose and don’t look back.”
Annette stared at him. He was right, of course. There was no saving her if the boat went over. If she tried to tow a capsized boat, her own canoe would capsize. Still, could she just paddle away and let someone drown?
Pender slogged to the husband, grabbed his collar, pulled him back to the tandem canoe. He didn’t think about it, just focused on doing what had to be done. He flailed until they were alongside Annette. Chaos bobbed happily at his side, enjoying the swim.
Annette struggled to keep the boat aligned to the waves and in front of the towed boats as Pender pushed the man onto the side of the canoe, then, somehow over the gunnel into the boat, Annette bracing desperately to keep the canoe from rolling over. When the man tumbled into the canoe, Pender used the last of his strength to try to center the man’s weight, but he was pinned between a pack and the side of the boat and Pender couldn’t budge him. The canoe listed badly to the heavy side, staying up only because of Annette’s powerful bracing strokes.
Pender didn’t think there was any way to get in the canoe himself. He would have to get to the other side of the canoe and then pull himself in. It seemed as impossible as running a marathon. He let go of the canoe and tried to swim. He sank, his arms unable to respond. He struggled to the surface, put a hand on the gunnel, and looked at Annette, his face apologizing for leaving her like this. He started to let go again, get it over with.
“Try!” Annette screamed at him. It was like she could read his mind. He could see the desperation in her face, and he knew that she loved him and it would be hard for her. He’d give it one last shot.
Slowly, Pender pulled himself hand over hand along the gunnel to the bow, kicking just enough to keep from pulling the canoe over. When he got to the bow, he swung quickly to the other side of the canoe and worked his way to the seat. He looked back at Annette. She nodded, understanding he was going to pull himself up and in. Or try. She counted silently to three, forming the words for the numbers with exaggerated lip movements so he could see the count. On three, she braced hard on the left, and he pulled and kicked himself as high in the air as he could and pulled the boat under himself, landing his upper body on the pack behind the bow seat.
As Pender wriggled the rest of the way on board, the canoe’s center of gravity shifted again, and Annette braced to keep them upright. Pender struggled to center the khaki man’s weight, finally throwing a pack overboard to make space, his mind registering a sad farewell to the last of their food and the gear that had served him faithfully and well for many years.
The canoe was still badly out of balance. Pender crawled to the second pack, heaved it over the side, and then tried to center the khaki man, a limp, helpless form huddled against one side of the canoe, his feet and legs hanging on the gunnel. Pender moved him into the middle of the canoe and pushed him several feet toward Annette. He crawled back to the bow, looking around for Chaos, hoping to pull the dog in before he got in the confined space of the bow seat, where it would be too dangerous to deal with a sixty-pound dog. The dog was swimming gaily in a wide arc around the boat, a hundred feet away, oblivious to the crisis and to the fact that they were a good kilometer from any kind of land.
Tears streamed down Annette’s face. “Paddle!” she screamed. Pender nodded. She couldn’t hold their position anymore. They had to paddle or die. They would have to let Chaos fend for himself. It was a miracle she had kept them upright this long. It had been a bad trade, the surly yuppies for a great dog.
Pender tottered into the bow seat, his body not working right, every movement stiff and slow. He picked up his paddle. His hands cramped. He fought the pain, coughed, flexed his hands, made himself grip and stroke. His teeth chattered, his back ached, his arms felt like lead weights hanging from his old wrinkled body. His vision was wavy and narrowing, the edges of his sight turning to black curtains. His body was shutting down. In a minute, Annette was going to be on her own. Motherfucker, Pender swore to himself. All for the sake of two worthless, self-centered yuppie motherfuckers who should have been shot. Pender paddled. He would go until he passed out. That was the best he could do for Annette. He stroked once, twice, a third time. Saw something at the edge of his tunnel vision, turned, saw Chaos swimming alongside like a big yellow otter, a grin on his face, a good-faith expression that his canoe buddy would bring him aboard. Pender stopped paddling, reached over the side, grabbed the nape of Chaos’s neck. His hand cramped but he squeezed anyway, pulled as hard as he could, keeping his weight centered on the seat.
It was a horrible effort, weak as a baby. He barely got Chaos’s head to lap level and the dog’s weight was pulling him back into the lake. Pender was powerless to prevent it, and he knew his next effort would be even less. Motherfucker.
But Chaos wanted back on board. His front paws clawed at Pender’s thigh, and he paddled with his rear feet and scratched and scrambled with his front ones until he sat on Pender’s lap. It would have been a hilarious moment if the situation weren’t so dire, the big yellow dog sitting on the lap of the bow paddler in the middle of a roiling sea, people fighting for their lives. But Pender didn’t get the humor of it at all, just the menace of an imminent capsize.
He leaned to one side, kept his butt centered on the seat, and threw Chaos backward on the other side. The dog flew ass-first onto the feet and legs of the khaki man, who was oblivious. Chaos scrambled to his feet, looked around, saw Annette swearing at him, shook water from his coat, and lay down between the yuppie man’s calves.
Pender could hardly lift his paddle, but his vision was wider. The struggle had gotten his heart pumping. The sense of cold came back. His teeth chattered and he figured his body would lock up pretty soon, but he thought maybe he could stay conscious long enough to get them to Pickerel River, the narrow waterway that wound through the bog separating Pickerel from French Lake. After that, it would be okay if he died. Annette could make the last few kilometers on her own.
He hoped she got home safely.
31
Pender could no longer keep a steady paddling cadence. He could barely lift the paddle from the water at the end of the stroke. He labored to bring the blade forward and splashed it into the water on his fore-stroke, like a beaver tail slapping the water.
Annette thought about having him stop, but the effort was keeping him warm, and as anemic as his paddling strokes were, they helped a little.
She tried to make time. She paddled at a driving pace, switching sides when the wind and waves dictated it—three or four strokes on the right, correcting stroke on the left, two or three more left strokes, correcting stroke on the right.
Despite the loss of paddling power, they were flying across Pickerel Lake, pushed by a strong wind with occasional shirt-flapping gusts. Annette figured their speed for something around six miles per hour. Compared to maybe three or four with two healthy paddlers in still winds and seas. Yet their progress seemed agonizingly slow and, the slower she felt, the faster her mind raced. Should she run for shore? Minutes after they started paddling again, they passed the low island Pender had sighted for a landmark. It was the last place on Pickerel that Annette knew had an easily accessible campsite. The khaki woman in the solo boat twenty feet behind her had stopped moaning, but she would be freezing cold now, or in shock, or both.
The woman’s husband was sprawled in front of Annette, passed out, his body positioned under a thwart and the canoe yoke. He was in bad shape—blue lips, occasional shakes, passing in and out of consciousness. He was hypothermic or close to it. And Pender worked the paddle like a dying man, barely able to stay upright.
Should she get them to shore? Pitch a tent, pull out sleeping bags? Get a fire going?
She started to course-correct for the island and changed her mind. Did they even have a tent in any of the packs that were left? Did they have sleeping bags? Did they have food? Pender had jettisoned the only pack she knew had food in it and the gear pack that had their tents in it. Just getting these people warm might not save them. They needed calories, she thought.
They were seven miles from French Lake. Annette tried to calculate the travel time. At five miles per hour, an hour and a half. At six miles per hour, an hour and minutes. If she went for the island, it would take ten minutes to get there, ten more to get everyone on land, maybe twenty, another twenty minutes to off-load the packs and find a tent and sleeping bags. If they had a tent and sleeping bags. Another ten minutes to erect the tent. Another ten to inflate pads—if they had pads. Twenty minutes to find wood and start a fire. About the same amount of time as continuing on to French Lake. Plus they’d probably be on the island without food.
She focused on French Lake. She prayed someone would be there to put the sick and ailing in warm vehicles, whisk them off to Atikokan General, put hot fluids in them, a hot meal. God help us if no one’s there, she thought. She would have dead people on her conscience. She just didn’t know which of them would die. Maybe they all would. How would she deal with that? How could she deal with losing Pender? Not now, she thought, not after all this. They had waited a lifetime.
Thirty minutes later, she could see the two arms of land hooking across the east end of Pickerel. The one from the north stretched like a long, narrow pincer, low and flat, almost to the opposite shore. The one from the south a short, blunt point, a landmark called The Pines. Almost home, she thought. She could see the narrow passage between the points into the east bay, could visualize the quick two-kilometer crossing to the bog that marked the path of the Pickerel River. She could visualize the placid, twisting waterway ending in French Lake.
She checked the khaki man again. He was still breathing, still moving a little now and then. He was still alive. Who knew for how long? Pender was on the edge. His paddling rate had descended into a weak pantomime, seconds elapsing between strokes, his pull on the blade so feeble it no longer affected the boat.
As Annette thought it, Pender slumped headfirst toward the prow, jolting to a stop when his waist could bend no further. The paddle slipped from his grasp, splashed into the lake, and floated into Annette’s outstretched hand as the canoe overtook it. She wanted desperately to hold him and warm him and tell him how much she loved him. But there wasn’t time. They had to get to the take-out, or people would start dying.
Pender pushed himself erect with an effort that sapped his last reservoir of strength. He tried to hold himself in a sitting position, but his body had shut down. His vision turned to blackness, and he lost all feeling in his body. He could not tell up from down, could no longer hear or think or will his body to do anything. He fell backward, over the thwart behind his seat, landing on Chaos, who yelped with surprise. His back seemed impossibly arched over the thwart, Annette fearing a fracture. Seconds later, he groaned loud enough for her to hear, a painful groan, and lifted his feet onto the seat. He pushed his torso backward in the boat until his head hit the yuppie man’s body, his back flat on the bottom of the canoe, his calves resting on the thwart, his head between the yuppie man’s legs. And he passed out.
Annette stifled an involuntary moan. He was dying. And there was nothing she could do. He would be dead before . . . The thought made her choke. He might be dead now. She cursed the khaki couple in a silent rage. She cursed them and all people who gave nothing and took all. Pender was right. They were everywhere. Self-absorbed morons entitled to whatever they wanted, when they wanted it. The warmongers in the U.S., the ruthless capitalist wannabes in Ontario with their contempt for wilderness, their obsession with strip-mining and clear-cutting and “monetizing” the people’s assets.
Her rage fueled a furious paddling cadence. They were on the pinch point in minutes. She knifed through the pincers, cutting left around one point, then a circle turn ninety-degrees to head east-northeast again. It was a perilous turn. For a few seconds, they were broadside to the waves. The water lapped at the very top of the canoe. She feared her boat would take water, maybe enough to drown the two men, maybe just enough to send them into full hypothermia. She wondered if the waves and wind would somehow capsize the boat with the yuppie lady in it. If that happened, Annette knew she would leave the woman to her own fate. You were right, Gabe, she thought. Sometimes there’s no right answer.
Minutes later, she entered the Pickerel River delta, a soggy, confusing lowland filled with reeds and marsh plants. It was a classic bog waterway, twisting and turning in every direction, its current almost invisible. From countless journeys through the marsh, she knew the river cut south from the opening, even though your eyes told you it had to be the body of water continuing north-northeast. Annette slowed her hull speed to make sure she had plenty of space for her train of canoes to negotiate the tight curves. Fifteen minutes later, the river opened to a pond, the southwest terminus of French Lake. Home at last!
Spirits buoyed, she searched the far shore for any sign of human help. She started to cut northeast toward the park pavilion, where there would a be telephone and maybe a ranger, then saw two human figures on the sand beach near Baptism Creek just a hundred yards or so to her right. There was a parking lot just above the beach. She tried not to hope one of the people was Christy, just hoped they had a car or a van and a willingness to help.
Annette glanced again at Pender and the yuppie man. They looked dead. Their faces were an unearthly white, their lips blue. She couldn’t tell if they were breathing. She charged for the beach, hoping the figure there that looked like Christy was Christy.
Fifty yards away, she could see that it was Christy and s
he was yelling to someone back up the wooded trail behind her, a short trail that led to the parking lot. Chalk one up for a benign, interactive god, Pender, Annette thought. As she hit the sandy shallows, Christy splashed into the water to pull the canoe ashore, Chaos leaped out of the canoe and ran mindlessly on the beach. Eric, Annette’s CSO assistant, burst onto the beach from the trail.
Annette fell into Christy’s hug and then leaned on her daughter to get out of the canoe.
“These people are dying,” she said. “We have to get them to the hospital.”
Christy looked at the two men in the bottom of her mother’s canoe. “They might be dead, Mom.”
Annette felt Pender’s wrist for a pulse. It was there. Faint, very rapid. Not normal but not dead.
“Is that Gabe?” asked Christy.
Annette nodded, choked on a sob, moved to the yuppie man and checked his pulse. It was faint but stronger than Pender’s. It figured.
Eric trotted to join them. He waded into the water, looked at the bodies in the canoe, turned pale, ran up on the beach, and vomited.
“They aren’t dead, you idiot,” Christy yelled at him. “Help me get them up to the van.”
Annette reeled in the solo boats, beached Pender’s long, slender vessel, bent to check the khaki woman’s pulse, trying not to think that if anyone deserved to die, it was her. When Annette grasped the woman’s wrist, her eyes opened, clear and blue. She blinked a few times. “Where are we?” she asked.
“We’re at French Lake. We’re taking your husband and my friend to the hospital. Can you walk?”
The woman struggled to a sitting position. “I’ll try.”
Annette helped her sit on the beach, then joined Christy and Eric to carry Pender and the khaki woman’s husband to the van. She came back to help the woman negotiate the trail to the van and gestured for her to sit on the seat where her husband lay.