The River

by Peter Heller

  “What?” Wynn said, leaning his ear down close. “What’d you say? We?”

  “She has to pee,” Jack said.

  “Oh.”

  She nodded, barely.

  “Oh, okay.”

  They took up their now regular positions and Wynn held her under her head and upper back and Jack lifted her hips and knees and they carried her fifteen feet from the fire and set her down over a larger stone and let her half sit. They still held her torso. She was very weak.

  “Can you pee like that?” Wynn asked. She was naked from the waist down from where they’d stripped off her wet clothes. She nodded. She did. They both felt relief as they heard it hitting the stones, almost as if it were they themselves emptying. When she finished, everyone held position for an awkward minute.

  “Ipe,” she whispered.

  “Wipe? Oh, wipe! Got it!” Wynn said, a little too loud. This was all new territory for him. Jack, who had grown up on a ranch, held little stigma for bodily functions and no patience for squeamishness, said, “Just a sec,” and ran up to the berm and yanked out halms of dried grass and brought them back. He handed them to her and she tried to take them but she was too weak. Her eyes spilled tears then. The tears ran unhindered down over her bruised cheeks and dripped off her chin.

  “Okay, okay,” Jack said gently. “I got this. Okay?”

  She nodded faintly. He patted her with a bunch of grass and they carried her back. She was very weak. Her underwear and pants had been hanging by the fire and were dry, and Jack and Wynn worked one, then the other up her legs and snapped and zipped the fly and buckled the webbing belt. They worked her right arm through the sleeve of her zip-up fleece sweater and then through the sleeve of the rain jacket and zipped them up over her slung left arm. The wind had died, thank God. A light northwest breeze and the overcast had broken up. Just high clouds drifting slowly and bruised-rose underneath from the rising sun, which had not yet cleared the trees. No frost. They worked her dried wool socks over her feet and put her Gore-Tex hiking boots back on and laced them up. They doused the embers of their fire with lakewater. After the first hiss and the exploding puff of ash and steam and the sharp stench of char, they walked away from it and could smell woodsmoke. The first time in two days, and they knew again that they were keeping company with the forest fire.

  * * *

  They wrapped her in one of the sleeping bags and folded the emergency blankets, struck the tent, rolled up the ground pads, and packed their meager provisions in the canoe. Well, now there was room for her. They didn’t even know her name. The man, Pierre, had said something like Maia, hadn’t he? They set her in the middle, propped back against the dry bag. Wynn walked up the beach to retrieve the pieces of the walkie-talkie, he wasn’t sure why. Maybe the guts of it were still good, maybe there was another party ahead of them on the river that had one, though he thought the odds were low. But when he got to the handset the plastic body was badly shattered. He tried the volume and squelch knobs, but nothing—it was dead. He scooped it up for the garbage bucket when they got to their gear. They shoved off. Wynn took the stern and steered. Jack set the pace in the bow. He sat up in the webbing seat and he kept the rifle propped against the bow deck.

  Wynn felt like they had paddled this stretch of shore now a hundred times. It felt as if they had spent half their lives paddling this piece. If this were really a bad dream, or Hell, they would paddle it for another hundred years. It was not a bad place to have to relive again and again, what with the birches just beginning to yellow, and the brightening day flushing the lake with blue, the tall grasses and the fireweed in so many shades of pink. A place to revisit, to sustain one like Cézanne’s mountain. Not.

  Jack thought that if he never saw this shoreline for the rest of his life, or one like it, he’d be fine. It was some vortex that kept sucking them back, or the voices were, hers and his. If they’d never heard the voices in that strange fog, they’d be long gone. He wished they were. They needed to get off this damn lake once and for all, get downriver, get to the village and a phone, get the hell out of this country that was starting to feel like very bad luck.

  Jack believed in luck. The turning of a card that sent a life in one direction or another. The slip of a single hoof on stone, the sound of two voices in the mist. He believed in it as much as he believed in any other thing, like loyalty or hard work. And sometimes the places that happenstance sent you weren’t as vague as a direction, sometimes they were as steel-cast and unforgiving as a set of rails. And sometimes the only way to jump the rails and set a new course was to have a wreck. Right now they needed speed. And he felt some comfort in the rifle propped at his feet; they might need that, too.

  * * *

  They quartered into the light wind and made good time. They paddled into the mouth of the outlet and felt the acceleration of the current. They entered the broad right-turning bend and hugged the right shore. Then they came around a ledge of bedrock and they saw the flat horizon line of the falls and beyond it the tops of the trees below, and there was the take-out beach and the tributary and the gap in the willows that was the path of their portage and there was nothing for it but to paddle in. Jack turned on the seat, said, “You got this?”

  The current was not too fast and Wynn said, “Sure,” and Jack put his paddle behind him and picked up the gun.

  * * *

  No sign of a boat. Not on the beach nor in the shade of the trail. They paddled in and hauled out on the shore and Jack said to the woman that they would just be a minute, they were going to take a look, she’d be fine, and she blinked. It was like a semaphore: OK. Jack picked up the rifle and they trotted down the trail.

  They could see in the mud that he’d dragged his boat. Maybe he’d hauled it to their campsite on the bluff in front of the cabin. His canoe was polyethylene, the heavy plasticlike material of the synthetic Old Towns; dragging it in the mud and over smooth rocks wouldn’t hurt it at all.

  They hustled down the now trodden path and burst into the clearing. And stopped dead. It took a second to register: where the pile of gear had been at the edge of the cliff was a scattering of debris, freeze-dried foil packs torn and littered over the grass, two of the blue plastic barrels clawed open and spilled, the other two barrels…gone. The ones with their clothes and cooking gear, tarps, pans, warm dry pants and jackets, wetsuits—vanished.

  Jack swore. Wynn said, “Bear. Jesus.”

  Jack didn’t say another word. He walked to the exploded food barrels, kicked a lid over with the toe of his boot. It was scratched and mangled. He squatted, tipped up the barrel: empty. Same with the other. Macaroni was scattered in the weeds, the Ziploc torn. The gear had been six feet from the edge of the rock ledge overlooking the falls. Too close maybe. Whatever it was had evidently kicked the two nonfood barrels over the edge. One of the lids lay in the sun. It was scored and gouged.

  Neither of them said a word. The implications were dawning: that they had ten days at least of river to go and no food save the two days’ worth in their emergency box; that they had an extra person, injured, and no extra warm clothes. Even the wetsuits and the spray skirt that kept water out of the boat were gone. Wynn whistled, a long, downward-sliding exhalation. After a minute he said, “Guess we shouldn’t leave food alone in bear country.”

  Jack straightened and let his eyes wander over the clearing. Then he walked it, zigzagging among the wreckage.

  Wynn said, “What are you thinking, Cap?”

  “Gimme a minute.”

  Wynn did. He watched Jack turning the scene over in his mind. Finally Jack said, “I didn’t see any bear tracks.”

  Wynn said, “It’s dry out here in the sun. Just rock and scrub.”

  “Yeah, but even when there’s not a bedded print you’ll see scrapings where they’re getting purchase. I don’t know.” Jack picked up a lid. “You ever seen a cooler torn open by a bear?” />
  “No.”

  “I have.”

  Wynn walked over. He felt like he was sleepwalking. None of this made sense. “Look,” Jack said and knelt, and Wynn knelt beside him. “When a bear tears open a container, to him it isn’t no different than a tree. He’s been tearing open trees for a million years. A plastic cooler, some poor sonofabitch’s car with peanut butter in the trunk—it’s all the same to him. His claws dig in somewhere and rip up or down, the way he claws up a root or down on a termite nest or a honeycomb. The claw marks make a continuous line. Look.” Jack had the two black plastic barrel lids in his hand. He fitted one, then the other on the mangled top of the barrel and turned them slowly until the one snugged down tight. “The claw marks, if that’s what they are, don’t line up.”

  “You think it’s something else?”

  “Or someone.”

  “Whoa.” Wynn sucked in his breath. It had taken him a while, longer than usual, to follow Jack’s train of thought. He said, “You think Pierre tried to kill his wife. Like you said. And then threw all our shit in the river because we got on the radio and told him we found her alive.”

  Jack shrugged.

  “That’s crazy, Cap. Jesus. Out here that’d be like attempted murder. I mean tossing someone’s provisions.”

  Jack turned. Wynn had never seen him look so agitated. Not when he’d decked the man in the bar; not when one of their English profs had said that western ranchers acted tough and independent but were actually on the teat of all sorts of government subsidies.

  “It’s a death sentence,” Jack said. “Or meant to be.”

  Wynn didn’t say anything. He fingered through a few of the empty food packages and said, “I think he’s scared of us. He seemed panicked. The way he kept his hand on the gun. He thought we kidnapped and killed his wife in the fog. Like some Deliverance shit. He’s not sure, anyway. Or maybe when we didn’t come back last night he panicked and took off for help, like he wanted us all to do.” Wynn shuddered. “This was a bear. When I imagine a camp torn apart by a bear, it looks just like this.” He stood, huffed. “Cap, how many trip accounts did we read where a bear came into camp? It makes sense. Pierre had already made the portage and packed up all his stuff in his boat below and he was waiting for us. Then when the bear tore through camp, he just jumped in his canoe to escape. Figuring we’ll follow right after.” He rubbed his eyes. “I keep thinking the Texans or whatever they are could have hurt her. I dunno.”

  “Well, okay,” Jack said. One of the things he loved about his buddy was that he cut everyone yards of slack. “All we’ve got to do is ask her. What the fuck happened. But if Pierre did this to her and us, we better be frigging glad he’s got a shotgun and we’ve got a rifle.”

  Wynn thought about that. If the man did want them dead, with a shotgun and buckshot he’d have to get within fifty or sixty yards. To be sure. With a scoped rifle, if he was good, he could pick them off from a quarter mile.

  * * *

  They trotted back up to the beach and the canoe. They couldn’t ask her, because her eyes were closed again and her pulse was thready and she’d drifted back into shock.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They made a fire by the canoe, right on the cobbles of the portage beach. And they wrapped her in the sleeping bags again and heated rocks and warmed her up. They elevated her legs and when she stirred they got her to sip some warm sweet water. It was touch and go; that’s what Wynn thought. If she survived the next few days it would be…what? A miracle? No, but the odds didn’t seem good. If she was going to survive, the next few days would be critical. They needed to keep her in fluids and calories, and more than anything she needed rest. That was the quandary.

  They could bust open the door of the little cabin in the clearing and stay for a few days, let her build up her strength. They could forage berries and fish. But. If the fire caught them here they would be toast. Or anywhere up here. From the topo maps the river looked to be pretty narrow for the next forty or fifty miles. Flash-baked. What they didn’t want to become. And every day they screwed around here near the lakes was another day closer to harder frosts and snow. She needed rest and they needed to get down the river to the village at the mouth of the bay.

  Jack said, “We should get some miles in today.”

  “I was thinking that. But—”

  “If I’m right, Number One Dickhead will be waiting at the next portage. He can’t afford to let us pass him.”

  “Well—”

  “It’s flat water till Godawful Falls. Twenty-eight miles. She can rest in the boat. The rapid is a short portage like this and an easy beach landing. What the notes say. If he did this, he’ll be there.”

  Wynn said, “Maybe we should pick some blueberries before we take off.”

  “I was thinking that, too. She’s warm in the bags now, we can let her sleep.”

  “I don’t think that’s sleep.”

  “Yeah.”

  They pulled out the single stainless pot and walked back to the clearing. The cloud shadows moved over it, and over the silvered peeling logs of the cabin walls, and the steel roof, and over the shrubs, the dark swaths of blueberries that roughened the meadow behind.

  The swift shadows striped them with running stains that flowed over without a snag and suddenly cooled the air, and were chased upstream by the next sweep of sunlight. Wynn stopped and watched the cloud shadows run and thought that there was something beautiful in the cabin in the clearing in the running sunshine. The crashing of the river had become white noise, and strangely, looking around him, he thought the place was held in a rare silence.

  He almost wished they could stay there. Wished that the cabin was stocked with cans of pork and beans, barrels of flour, sugar, rice, salt, packets of dried meat. That there was a saw, two saws, axes, that they could all stay here and rest and put up firewood and hunt a moose and soak the meat in salt brine and hang it to dry on racks. That the three of them could stay there all winter, and she could rest and heal, and they could let Pierre or whoever he was enact whatever drama, whether grief or cover-up. Wynn walked to the edge of the little bluff and looked at the mayhem of the falls.

  Ten days out to the village. Eight maybe, if they paddled like demons, but then she would slow them down—on the portages around the big rapids, in the speed with which they could break and make camps and extend their days, and in her need for rest. So maybe more than ten. Jack must have been thinking the same thing, and about the meager amount of food in the box, because he came up beside him and said, “Maybe we should collect more than a potful.”

  Wynn said, “Good idea.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the next portage. Thing is, the book says it’s just after a small rock island with a couple of little trees. Says it’s an easy take-out, but it doesn’t say what the bank’s like.”

  The book was just a printout of a couple of trip blogs, stapled and sealed in a map case. Each of them had one, for redundancy. The most helpful by far was the blog written up by two canoe guides from Pickle Lake who had paddled the river two summers ago. They had a simple sense of humor; they said things like, “Take out just after the bull moose on the left.” It made Jack crazy, he thought they were idiots, but Wynn envied people who could wring pleasure from the simplest things. But altogether the trip accounts and the topo map gave them a fairly detailed sketch of what they were in for: a hundred and fifty-two miles altogether, of a big river that flowed north and grew in power as it gathered tributaries big and small. Two more mandatory portages around big falls: about twenty-eight miles to the next one, Godawful Falls. Then eighty-one miles of fast water after that, to the next huge drop and portage at Last Chance Falls, with a couple of bigger rapids between, dangerous but runnable. A large meander in this stretch, northwest to northeast, before the river bent again north and made directly for Hudson Bay as if eager to get home. After Last Ch
ance it was just forty-three miles of swift but mostly flat water to the village and the take-out.

  “Thing is,” Jack said, “at Godawful we don’t know if there’s cover. Rocks, trees, maybe a bedrock ledge where Fucker Number One can just go prone and blast us from above. We don’t know shit.”

  “He just panicked. Maybe we’ll catch up to him this afternoon. We can talk to him.”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  They looked at the rapid. Half the river on the near side poured into a wide chute that unleashed over the first high ledge and battered itself to white on the way down and pummeled the foaming water beneath it in an exploding hole that rolled back on itself. In the surging trough reared a large black log. It buoyed up and was pulled down and buried in froth and bobbed up and flailed for air and was beaten back, held against the falls by the upstream folding of the hydraulic. It made Jack queasy. He looked away. He had long ago trained himself not to think of horses or anything else, but sometimes he did.

  “So we’ll ask her about what happened when she wakes up,” Jack said. “Let’s pick a mess of berries now and get going.”

  * * *

  On their trip so far berry-picking had been the best respite. Maybe the most fun thing they did. Because, unlike with fishing, they had zero ego involved, zero ambition. They hadn’t grown up thinking, I’m going to be the best berry-picker ever, whereas with fishing and even canoeing they thought that. Berry-picking was like throwing a Frisbee around, or taking a walk up the orchard road, or jumping into the lake and then lying on the sun-warmed stones. It was an achievement-free zone, which Wynn was coming to realize is where most of his joy happened. Making constructions on the riverbank was the same.