The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  ** ** **

  The raft was camouflaged with cottonwood branches. Terry hoisted Roarke into the back, then stepped in beside him. Deke pushed the raft into deeper water. “Get in the bow,” he told Gail. Gail climbed in. Deke waited until the moon vanished once more behind a dense quilt of clouds. Satisfied, he pushed off and took the oars mid-raft. He aimed the stern toward the far cliff wall. The current was smooth and even. Deke stroked until they bumped against the wall, then he pushed off to get an oar between the oarlock and the wall and pointed the raft straight downstream. He removed his .22 from the back of his belt and aimed it at Gail. “Slide down,” he told her. “Keep your head below the branches.”

  He turned to Terry. “You and Roarke, get your butts on the bottom of the raft.” From water level, only Deke’s head and shoulders were visible above the sapling camouflage. From shore, they could have been a fallen tree floating downriver.

  ** ** **

  Three of the SWAT team members sat around a campfire they had built in a ring of river stones, eating packaged food. The fourth member sat on a rock by the river’s edge, on lookout. He noticed a slight thickening in the water next to the cliff wall. It moved with the current, like a lump in the water. Curious, he clicked on his powerful flashlight. The flashlight beam hit the canyon wall first, in front of the raft, alarming Deke, giving him time to frantically ship his oars and slide his body onto the floor of the raft. The flashlight illuminated the leaves of the cottonwood branches poking out above the rounded black tubes of the Avon. Deke could see the light brighten the canyon wall just beyond the raft.

  The SWAT team member saw nothing but a tree float by. Satisfied, he clicked off the beam and continued his vigil.

  ** ** **

  From his vantage, Tom could make out the SWAT team’s campfire on the far side of the river. He had seen the beam of light dance across the water’s surface. The raft blended in well with the dark current. All he knew was that his wife and son were headed downriver … somewhere. He patted Maggie on the head and told her it was time to go. The moonless night offered limited visibility, but Tom had familiarized himself with the canyon rim and the terrain over the course of the day. He had marked out in his mind’s eye the next station—one that would give him a perspective on the takeout.

  ** ** **

  What he didn’t see was the look in Deke’s eyes after he elevated his head to peer through the cover of the cut branches after the flashlight beam went dark. It could have been just campers, harmlessly monitoring river traffic from the water’s edge, but Deke’s gut told him otherwise. He suspected his presence on the river was no longer a secret. But where on the river? That was an advantage he believed he still held.

  ** ** **

  Bobby Long was talking to his horse in the parking lot when the camouflaged raft floated into the top of the run above Canyon Gorge takeout. The cloud cover held, and the trooper monitoring the river flow had walked back to the campfire to replenish his water bottle. Terry held Roarke against the bottom of the raft in the stern. Deke had the .22 pressed to Gail’s head in the bottom of the front of the raft. Their legs were tangled up somewhere in the middle.

  There was fear in Gail’s eyes as she watched the distinctive, towering cliffs of Canyon Gorge pass overhead. “You’re not getting off at the takeout.”

  Deke pressed his lips to Gail’s ear. “No.”

  “There’s nothing downriver but the Gauntlet.”

  “I know.”

  “We won’t make it,” Gail told him. “It’s class VI white water … suicide.”

  “Well, it won’t be for a lack of trying, will it? You’ve already lost a husband to this river. It’d be a shame to lose his son.”

  ** ** **

  Tom MacDonald was every bit as worried as his wife. He crept along the rim of the canyon and watched the camouflaged raft float by the takeout and pass between the towering cliffs of Canyon Gorge—stone monoliths that looked like mythological pillars to a forbidden place. The raft pulled in to a scimitar-shaped beach carved out of the far side of the river—safe harbor above the cauldron of smashed water that represented the Gauntlet below.

  Tom walked farther downstream and sat on a rock above the rumble of the river. He knew Deke was going to challenge the Gauntlet to make his escape. He assumed he’d wait till daylight to do it. Recalling the configuration of the river, how it made a horseshoe bend midway through the Gauntlet, he knew he would have to take the shortcut to the tail end and there make a stand—if there was anything to make a stand for. If Gail, somehow, survived the Gauntlet. It was a hypothetical based on a hypothetical, but at least he knew the where—which gave him a nub of hope.

  While he was thinking these things, the cloud cover parted like curtains on the far side of the canyon, revealing translucent ribbons of coral- and cranberry-colored northern lights, the aurora borealis. They shimmered and swayed like the dresses of backup singers—shafts of gauzy, soft color. Tom was sure it was a sign that Mother Nature was telling him Gail was right: that there was a harmony in the wilderness, an unspoken order. He was not a religious person, but in that moment on the rim of that canyon, staring at something that took his breath away and stirred him in a most primitive way, he knew, even with so much uncertainty ahead, that there was a force for good in the world that was hard to explain but impossible to ignore—a version, perhaps, of Dr. King’s moral arc. Faith. Hope. Help. Justice. Something inexplicable but true.

  28

  Trooper Page Noel couldn’t sleep. He reprised the baying of the bloodhounds in his ears when he discovered Mary Walsh’s red Ford Sedan and the poor woman’s long-dead body. He had to admire Deke and Terry’s misdirection at the railroad tracks, whether inadvertent or intended, that led to the lineup of traffic at the Sweet Grass border crossing. He was grateful for the tip that had narrowed the search to the River Wild, but there was much to be done, and too much still could go wrong. Because of that, he had a knot in his stomach when he climbed out of his Canyon Gorge takeout tent an hour before first light. He hoped the lieutenant might also be up; he wanted to talk. But Bobby Long was long gone. So were Marlene, his horse, and her trailer.

  ** ** **

  The Lieutenant’s attempts at sleep had been disturbed by the recurring image of the murdered Mary Walsh. He hadn’t seen her in a few years, but she was a thread to a part of his life he cherished. He believed in the great continuum of life, that there were friends and lovers and family and events that stitched you back in time in a way that gave comfort to the journey. He loved her smile and her rough laugh, and the truth his wife required her to supply. He thought of her because he knew her, but her death rankled him beyond that. It was really a matter of unfairness. That a woman who had been voted Teacher of the Year year after year because she made her students in a hard-scrabble Deer Lodge elementary school believe in themselves even when the weight of failed romances made her give up on her own possibilities of sharing her life with someone else—that that same woman, Mary Walsh, had finally found a gentle man who loved her, only to be horrifically sabotaged by fellow human beings who valued life roughly on a par with cold beer—that made Bobby Long angry on top of sad. His first paying job came at age eleven, tossing bales of hay. It planted in him the belief that life was hard, but hard work would at least reward you with the wherewithal to afford a sufficiency of dignity to shepherd you through the tough times with moments of contentment, love, pride, adventure, friendship, memorable sex, and pan-seared rib-eyes. Though maybe not in that order.

  Which explained why Detective Lieutenant Bobby Long of the Montana State Police was driving his vehicle and horse trailer down a neglected logging road in the dark five miles downstream of Canyon Gorge and a stretch of the River Wild called the Gauntlet. He was goddamned if William Deakens Patterson was going to stay at the chess board long enough to make the last move. He had described himself to Sergeant Noel as insurance, but in his old rodeo-ridin’ heart he was sure it would come down to one last ride. Troope
r Billy Heston sat shotgun beside the lieutenant, his head jiggling like a bobblehead doll on the rough road.

  “Son, I’m going to tell you something so you don’t make the mistake I made once. It’s better not to lose sleep over things you should have done different.” Long kept his eyes fixed on the road. “But first I’m going to give you something.” He unsnapped a shirt pocket and handed Heston a laminated index card. Heston glanced at it. The edges were nicked with use. The once-clear laminate had yellowed over time. He struggled to read the typeface in the dark interior.

  “It says you have the right to remain silent,” the lieutenant told him. “Anything you say can and will be used against you. Etcetera.” The young trooper offered it back.

  “Keep it,” the lieutenant told him. He patted his other shirt pocket. “I have another. Always have it on you.” Long looked at him sternly. “Always.” Heston slid the card into his shirt pocket.

  “Many years ago,” the lieutenant continued, “I was at the tail end of my shift. It was early morning. Call came in over dispatch there was domestic trouble at a motel in this little speed-bump town of Wolf Creek. The motel owner met me in the dirt parking lot as I skidded in. She was wrapped in a bathrobe, she looked like hell. She held the robe around her with one hand and pointed at room 11 with her other. They were stand-alone units. The door to unit 11 was open, light spilled out. ‘He hurt her bad,’ she told me. ‘Be careful.’ I put in a call for backup, but the dispatcher said no units were available: ETA forty-five minutes. I realized I was on my own. So I drew my weapon and ghosted over to the unit. I tried to look in a small window, but it was too dirty to see through, so I crept up to the open door and just listened for a moment. All I could hear was Merle Haggard on the radio. He was singing “Kern River,” and in the soft parts during the verse I could hear a girl sobbing. I was actually trying to decide if I should wait till the song was over to step in, but then I thought the song would give me cover so I stepped inside with my gun drawn. William Deakens Patterson was sitting on the bed, bare-chested, wearing blue jeans, drinking beer. There was blood on his chest and hands. There was a cooler on the floor beside him, filled with iced beer, empty beer bottles on the bedside bureau. There was a bunch of blood on the carpet. The door to the bathroom was open. Deke casually held out his hands when he saw me. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he said. ‘The bitch is in the bathroom. Yes, I know my Miranda rights, and no, I ain’t talkin’.’ I kept my weapon trained on him and edged over to the bathroom door. There was a naked girl in the tub, crying, sitting in a pool of her own blood as if the hotel were haunted and blood instead of water came out of the faucet.”

  Long glanced at Billy Heston in the dark cab. “Mo Udall once said about his hometown in Utah, it wasn’t the end of the world, but you could see the end of the world from there. That’s where I was.” He returned his eyes to the road. The horse trailer brushed back overhanging branches. “In a place not too much more civilized than this. On my own. Without backup. I figured I had a girl bleeding out. I had a verbal Miranda, so I cuffed Deke and put him in the back of my car. Then I attended to the girl and called an ambulance. At that point, I was probably thinking more about what could go wrong than what I was doing right. I drove the thirty-odd miles to Helena. I clicked on the video camera and sound recorder just in case. The son of a bitch talked almost the whole way. The violence must have been some kind of rush. He confessed to cuttin’ her with his knife. Said she was trash. Young pussy, which he said he liked, but trash. Disposable. He had picked her up in a bar. She told him she’d run away from home, so he knew he could do what he wanted. Have sex. Get drunk. Cut her up for fun. He didn’t hurt her until she said she didn’t like Hagg, or any country music. She got sick of listening to it in her parents’ home. So he cut her. Said he’d keep cutting her until she said she liked it. I took him to Helena County jail and booked his sorry ass. I booked his knife into evidence. I gave them a thumb drive of the conversation and tape from my car and they burned a disk or something—you know what that shit is—and they sealed the confession in an envelope with the police report number.

  “As the hearing for the trial date approached, I got a call from the DA’s office. They said the girl had disappeared. They had lost their only witness. The assistant DA said they couldn’t find a written waiver for Deke’s confession in the file, and that’s all we had left—his confession. I told them he had verbally waived his Miranda rights, and they said okay, they’d check the tape, but there wasn’t one there, either. They told me we had a problem. At the hearing the day before the trial, we’re all in court and the defense files a motion to suppress and the judge says to prosecution, ‘People would you like to be heard?’ And my guy looks at me with a sick look—I was seated in the public section—and there’s nothing he can say because I fucked up and didn’t get a waiver on paper or tape, because I thought I had one, and I was a little tired and running on adrenaline, and because Deke had talked on tape for half an hour about how he had hurt that girl. And then the judge says, ‘I’m going to grant the motion.’ And he ordered the case dismissed and the defendant to be released forthwith … forthwith!

  “It was the second-worst day of my life, after my wife dying. The bailiff uncuffed Deke, and he walked out a free man, but not before stopping in front of me sitting there in that courtroom, fuming. He could tell I was about to burst. He leaned close, gave me a shit-eating grin, and said, ‘You have the right to remain silent.’”

  They skidded around a bend at probably too much speed; a deadfall pine blocked the road. Long, preoccupied with his story and driving on autopilot, swore violently as he jammed his foot against the brake pedal. The tires of his pickup locked. He could hear the weight of Marlene’s chest slam into the front of her trailer. The horse whinnied. The truck, propelled by the added weight of the trailer, skidded across the dirt road, coming to a stop inches from contact. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Long pronounced. His first concern was Marlene. He pulled on the hand brake and hopped out of the truck. He put his hand through the opening near the front of the trailer. He patted the horse. “You okay, girl? My fault. End of the road for you.”

  Five minutes later the lieutenant was tightening Marlene’s saddle as Billy Heston looked on. Satisfied, Bobby Long hooked a cowboy boot in the stirrup and hoisted himself atop his horse.

  “You know him better than anyone, Lieutenant,” Heston said, a little embarrassed to be lecturing his boss, though his intentions were born of the heart, not the head.

  “Deke doesn’t make much distinction between living and dying.”

  The lieutenant checked the magazine of his lever-action Winchester rifle and slid it back into his saddle holster. “If he’s alive when I get to him, he’s gonna wish he weren’t. C’mon, girl!”

  He prodded Marlene to circle around the root mass of the tree. It was still dark, but a tinge of pinkness from the direction of the river indicated dawn was on deck. Heston watched the lieutenant steer Marlene back onto the dirt road on the far side of the tree. He squeezed her with his knees, made a clicking sound, and off she went on a trot.

  ** ** **

  Having taken the short leg between the prongs of the river’s giant horseshoe, Tom and Maggie found themselves standing at first light on a forty-foot cliff above a deep pool downstream of the Gauntlet. A tributary carved a steep, obstructing gorge below where they stood, preventing any further progress by land. A sheer cliff faced them on the far side. Below the pool on the main river, there was a section of mild rapids, and below that the river evened out into slow, froggy water with rolling meadows on either side. This was the final stretch, where the river—exhausted by its wild ride through the Gauntlet—took a lazy breath before dumping into the Missouri River.

  Tom took in the jump once more: higher than was comfortable but survivable. Man and dog backed up for a running start. They launched themselves almost at the same time, sailed through the air for a few harrowing seconds, and plunged into the pool several yards apart. Tom bob
bed to the surface to find Maggie already dog paddling in circles looking for him. Tom back-paddled to slow their speed as the tail-out of the pool began to sweep them ever faster into the start of the rapids. Man and dog angled close together. Tom draped an arm over the retriever’s back. “Okay, Mags … show me your stuff.”

  Whoosh … they were swept into the first white water. Tom remembered to swing his feet downstream to protect himself from rocks. Maggie flailed with her forepaws to keep her head above water as they glided down a first spill and into a chute. A knifelike rock parted the current dead ahead. Tom pulled with his right arm to steer them to the right of the rock. He sailed by and was plunged into a tumble of white froth. When he made it back to the surface, the current rushed him toward a fallen log, angling out of the riverbank. He gulped a fresh breath and ducked below the surface to avoid being knocked out. He lost his grip on Maggie in the maneuver, and when he popped up downstream of the log he was separated from the dog. He could see her flailing away in the churn of a rapids that stretched from bank to bank, but he couldn’t reach her. He was too busy eying the deeper, calmer water now only forty feet away. Safe harbor.

  Maggie was first to be propelled over the mossy ledge and into the deeper water. She popped up safely ten feet downstream and immediately began paddling in circles, barking, looking for Tom.

  Tom sailed over the ledge and plunged into the pool below. He hit the uneven river bottom with considerable force—jamming one foot between rocks. The strength of the current pushed him forward, wedging the foot even tighter between the rocks. Tom looked down in panic. His foot was lodged in a way that made it almost impossible to free up without moving upstream against the powerful current. He stroked with all his might, but he couldn’t pull free. Maggie circled just downriver, looking for him; Tom could see her paws pushing against the water. He looked down once more: he was running out of air. Desperate, he planted his free foot on the rock beside the lodged foot for better leverage. He pushed as hard as he could, simultaneously wrenching his body. His trapped foot popped free, minus ear-sized flaps of skin on either side of his ankle. The clear water turned crimson. The pain was searing. Tom let out a scream that was muffled by the din of the rapids and turned into a rush of bubbles. The bubbles flew upward, toward Maggie and the blue beyond.