The River

by Peter Heller

  They paddled. They leaned into the work. They would get their best sprint on their knees, but they knew they had a long haul and so stayed in the seats for comfort and reached for the long stroke. They each used an alder and basswood paddle made by the master Mitchell in New Hampshire and the blades bent from the shaft to keep the stroke farther forward, where it was strongest. The most efficient stroke was all in front of the paddler, the blade lifting out of the water when it reached the hip.

  Jack set a hard pace and they paddled in perfect sync. On the lakes above they’d had all the time in the world and so had paddled expedition-style, with the sternman finishing his stroke with a slight twist of the shaft and the paddle’s power face arcing outward, the J-stroke. It kept the canoe straight. It was invented long ago because physics dictated that a stroke in the stern had much more steering power than a stroke in the bow, so if the sternman paddled, say, on the right side, starboard, the boat would always be turning left, to port. And so the little bit of twist and outward pressure at the end of the stern stroke acted like a rudder and checked the tendency to veer away. But the J-stroke took time. And that seemed long ago, that feeling of leisure, of taking their time. Of making the crossings at their own pace. Of drifting half the afternoon along the shadow of some ledge and casting for lake trout. That was before they climbed the hill on the island and saw the glow. Before they heard the couple arguing in the fog. That was another life.

  Now they had to make tracks, so they paddled marathon-style. Every eighth stroke or so, Wynn uttered “Hut!” and they switched sides. It meant they zigged and zagged slightly as they progressed, but the stroke rate was much higher. They moved much faster. And it took a lot more concentration. Still, Jack kept his eyes scanning ahead as far as he could see, all along the banks on either side. He was a hunter, and he’d trained himself most of his life to pick out movement and anomalous shapes. He didn’t have to think about it. He could spot a buck browsing in the shadows on some northern New England river long before Wynn, even with patient directions. (“Whoa, look at that sucker. Must be a six-by-six. See, under the beech.” “No.” “Two o’clock, see?” “No.” “He just stepped, there, in the shadow just to the right of the big silver tree.” “Uh—I know what a beech is!” “Are you fucking blind?” “I think I see him.” “No you don’t. Three o’clock!”…Like that.) Jack had the honed sight of a hunter, but Wynn had a lot more whitewater experience and he could see lines through rapids and holes where Jack just saw mayhem, so Wynn figured they were even. Jack looked now for Pierre.

  He was getting hot paddling and the muscles of his back and arms had the burn he knew he could sustain all day, and his breath came with the steady chuff of a train, and Jack made himself look. For the man or his green canoe. He let his eyes run up and down the banks, the shores of the wider bays. Why couldn’t the boat have been red, or bright yellow? He thought they made the Old Towns in those colors. Nope, it had to be green, the color of the woods, as if the man had been planning on stealth.

  The river widened. The occasional eskers that made the long ridged hills got farther and farther apart, the country flatter. That ten miles could make such a difference. Maybe it was a local thing, the topography. What he didn’t want was high banks, a constriction, where the man could reach them with a fusillade from good cover, and now the river was obliging by spreading itself into reaches of water that were like small lakes of their own. But still. The walls of mixed woods, of pine, spruce, fir, tamarack, birch, they were bulwarks of brooding silence that could shadow any intention. He thought of Conrad again, one of his favorites, of Heart of Darkness and what the masking forest meant to the thrashing steamer in that glorious story. Nothing but danger.

  The woman slept. Seemed to. She leaned back against the dry bag, eyes closed, propped in the corner of the bag and the gunwale. She sat on the life vest but her legs stretched out on the hull, where there was always water sloshing, and Wynn noticed that her pant legs were getting wet. They no longer had the big sponge they used to sop up what they called the bilge water—it was always there, water dripped off the paddles as they switched sides and collected—they’d have to cut the limbs of fir trees to make her a dry bed. They’d do it at the next stop.

  The next stop. It didn’t matter, it was a long way off. Paddling in rhythm like this, at high cadence, Wynn noticed that after a while he barely had to utter “Hut” before Jack switched and the paddles swung up and forward in perfect synchrony and their four hands changed position on shaft and handle midair and the blades hit the water at exactly the same moment: he could feel the canoe surge with the next stroke without a hitch. Smooth.

  They paddled in perfect concert, and Wynn also noticed that he could hear Jack’s breathing on the upstream breeze and that his own had slowed over the first miles and fallen into time with Jack’s and that they now breathed in unison. He also noticed that somehow in the concord of effort he forgot himself. The pain of it. What would have hurt and held his thoughts on when it might end, on when they could pull over and rest, or slow down—now because he and Jack moved the slender boat almost as one engine, somehow it freed him. His mind untethered and his attention ranged. He noticed that she was not asleep. She was breathing steadily, he could see the rise and fall of the life vest, but every once in a while she would shudder and gasp and her right hand resting on her thigh would clench. Her eyes would flutter open and, if he was watching, would meet his. Hazel green eyes he could see now. And there was something there: gratitude, maybe. A frustration that she couldn’t speak or help. Sadness. But she didn’t make another sound. That was the most unnerving. The gasp trailed off in the faintest whimper and that was it. No moan or cry. Not good. Wynn wondered again if something was broken inside and how much.

  He also noticed that despite the swelling, which had lessened since yesterday, and despite the bruising on her face and neck, she had fine features. High cheekbones and a straight nose. Her hair in the braid was glossy dark and streaked with russet. He imagined that she might be pretty; she was, for sure. Or not. Something stronger. She was strong. He could feel it in her every action and response, the tenacious will to live, even the desire not to be a burden. He paddled, lost in some fugue of rhythm and effort, and was startled when she convulsed again, and whimpered, and he winced himself and felt the heat flood his neck. When her eyes opened and quieted and settled on him, he said, “Maia? I’m Wynn. We’re gonna keep moving. We’re all gonna get out of here.” And he thought she might just have nodded before her eyes closed again.

  * * *

  They had paddled for almost four hours. The smell of smoke seemed to be getting stronger, ranker, with every mile. Not good. The sun was more than halfway to the trees on the west bank. Except for Wynn’s promise, no one had spoken. Jack finished five strokes on the left and laid the paddle across the gunwales and they drifted. Wynn let out a breath of relief and set the paddle against the seat. They glided. The boat seemed to take pleasure in it, to expend itself, too, with a long exhalation as the upstream wind turned it in a gentle arc to the west. They were in a wide reach. There was stony bank to their left and a broad cove on the east, densely wooded. Jack turned around in the bow seat. “How is she?” he said under his breath. Wynn shrugged. Jack read it as, Not so good.

  “Is she waking up?”

  “I dunno. A little. She’s whimpering.”

  “We should haul out,” Jack said. “We should take a look and get some food in her. In us, too. She might have to pee. I know I do.” When they were by themselves they knelt on the seat and peed over the rail. Now they both felt shy about doing it, even though their passenger was unconscious most of the time.

  “How many miles do you think we’ve gone?”

  Jack looked at the sun. He ran his eyes over the shore and gauged the progress of the current. With the wind in their faces and drifting, they barely moved. “Eighteen. Twenty.”

  “Damn.”
<
br />   “I know.”

  “Eight or ten to go.”

  Wynn drank from the squeeze bottle, unscrewed the cap, refilled it. He tossed it to Jack. “You think we should pull out here?”

  Jack drank. With the bottle tipped up he let his eyes run over the close bank, the left, the ledge rock and forest. He looked across to the right shore, far across the cove to the line of dense woods where half a dozen ducks flew fast over the trees and out across the water. “He won’t risk us getting past him, like I said.”

  Wynn waited.

  “I think we’re good right here. He wouldn’t be at some random spot, right?” Jack said.

  “I guess. I don’t think we need to be playing army.”

  Jack had the bottle halfway to his mouth. He lowered it. His eyes were flat.

  “You think we’re playing?”

  “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth.”

  They drifted. Jack held his eyes on Wynn and Wynn could not tell what he was thinking, except that the Gimme a minute was unspoken.

  Jack took his minute and said, “Your problem is you’ve got faith. In everyone, in everything. The whole universe. Everyone is good until proven bad. You’re kinda like a puppy.”

  That stung.

  “Thing is, Wynn, this fucker might have just tried to kill his wife.” He tossed the half-full bottle back. It hit Wynn in the chest but he caught it. “If he did, now he’s gonna try to kill you.”

  Wynn didn’t know what to say. The Jack in the bow resembled the Jack he knew, but. If he’d seen him like this, it had never been aimed in his direction. Wynn said, “Well, if he did it, why didn’t he just shoot her? Why didn’t he just shoot us, for that matter? When he first landed?”

  Jack grimaced; he didn’t want to be anywhere near the man, much less inside his head. He said, “He didn’t shoot her because he’s chickenshit. He thought he’d knock her out with a rock and bury her in the moss and duff and let the cold and wet and the animals take care of the rest. Too cowardly to brain his wife. Almost worked, too. Also, if he shot her and anyone ever did happen to find her they’d find a blast hole somewhere and maybe a slug, his slug. He didn’t shoot us because we surprised him. He wasn’t expecting us. We have a rifle and he’s got a shotgun and there’s two of us, and anyway he’s got to think it through. He doesn’t want us to get out of here, any of us. But he’d rather dump our shit and let the river and the weather and hunger take care of us. He’s not a born killer. And if he has to deal with us himself, he wants to think it through and pick his spot. Make it clean.”

  “His spot,” Wynn murmured.

  “Ambush. He didn’t ambush us back there because it was too open and spread out with two of us. He doesn’t have the balls for a firefight. He’ll let the river finish us, but if he has to, he’ll try to take us where we’re crammed tight and very close.”

  Wynn shook his head. “There was an accident. Bad. Then there was a bear. Now there’s some dude trying to run the river solo and so traumatized he can’t see straight. He needs help as much as we do. Jesus.”

  “Look, Big, maybe it was a bear. I’ve been dead wrong before. Maybe the bear shouldered our gear barrels into the river. Maybe she did fall out of a tree. But if she was some accident and this was a bear, where the fuck is Pierre?”

  “That’s just crazy.”

  Jack spat into the current. He said, “Our friend here will tell us. She’s not saying, but she will. We can cling to the bear theory or the fall-out-of-a-tree theory all we want, but meanwhile he took our food and dumped our shit in the river and he’s trying to kill us, too. And the sonofabitch has a gun.” Jack touched the rifle in the bow, the gesture almost unconscious. He scanned the far shore. “Lucky fucking thing he doesn’t have an ought-six or we’d be dead by now, guarantee it,” he murmured. He turned back to Wynn. “Let’s say you’re right. Pierre is off his meds. Pierre is panicked. Pierre is afraid we’re the killers and took off. Pierre just needs to be talked down, won over. Oh yeah, and that was another bear that scattered all our food and threw our shit in the falls. Bears everywhere—man. Good. Good then. Awesome. Everyone really is good and fair, go figure. But—” He snagged the tin of Skoal out of his pants pocket and twisted the lid, took a dip. “We really don’t wanna find out we’re wrong with buckshot to the chest.”

  “I’m not saying everyone’s an angel. It could’ve been the two drunks.”

  “I don’t think those guys could stalk a pine tree. Anyway, you’re the doc—she’s waking up, right? Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really like she’s not waking up, or not really like you don’t want to stress her out by asking if we’re going to get shot at any minute?”

  Wynn winced. “Why are you making me the bad guy?”

  “You’re not the bad guy. Definitely not. The bad guy seems to be in a category of his own. I just don’t know what category to put someone in who I think is my friend and is trying to get me killed.” Jack picked up his paddle. “Let’s go to shore and have lunch.”

  * * *

  After that nobody spoke. They found a low spot in the granite ledge rock and scraped up onto it. The canoe was Kevlar but it had an extra layer like a bow plate for that purpose. They never treated it like an eggshell, or a canvas canoe. It was made to get beat up, which is a little how they saw themselves. Okay to get roughed up, but not by each other. That’s what Wynn thought as he ran the painter to an alder and tied it off. They’d always been back-to-back.

  When they got to the canoe to lift her out, Jack said, “Hey, I’m sorry. If I’m amped, I just want us all to get down this river safe. All three of us.” Jack looked away and Wynn suddenly thought of Jack’s mother. The other river, when one of the three hadn’t made it out alive. Jack hadn’t told him the story until they had known each other for over a year. Jack said, “I just think we’ve gotta be prepared.”

  Wynn said, “It’s okay. I get it.”

  They carried her to a bench of grassy duff and laid her down. Her lower pant legs were wet where they’d been awash, and so was her seat. A sharp urine smell lingered. Jack exhaled. Without a word he began stripping off her pants and Wynn took off his. He always wore light wool long underwear—Jack had teased him that his hair would start growing through it, that they’d have to cut it off by the end of the season. They left her in the sun and Jack walked to the river and rinsed out her pants and underwear and spread the pants over willow branches. He dipped and wrung the underwear like a rag and came back and squatted beside her and whispered, “I’m going to clean you up.” And he did. When he was done he took the underwear back to the river and rewashed it and hung it on the branches. Wynn stripped his wool long johns and buckled his canvas pants back on and worked her feet into the woolies and tugged them up over her legs and hips. This had to change, he thought. She needed to wake up enough to drink some water, to eat something. If she didn’t, she would slip back into shock and die of exposure.

  Jack went to the canoe and heaved up one of the tied shirts. Must be fifteen pounds. He carried it to them. Then he went back for a cup and a spoon and the water bottle.

  “We’ll make a mash,” he said. Wynn nodded. “Do you think you can get her to drink a little?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s safe to try to wake her.”

  “Is it safe to let her go days with nothing?”

  “No.”

  The blueberries had warmed inside the shirt, in the sun. The fragrance made their mouths water. Jack poured a handful into the cup and mashed them with the spoon. Added a trickle of water and stirred the slurry. “Wanna see if she will drink something first?” he said.

  “Okay.” Wynn placed one hand under her head along the band of the wool hat and asked Jack with a look if he could come around the other side and lift her back. They sat her up and she moaned, very
faintly. “Got her?” Wynn said. He let go and jogged to the canoe, unstrapped the dry bag and brought it back, propped her up. She took shallow rapid breaths and uttered a soft whine. She seemed to be terrified or in pain. It made Wynn think of Leo back home, his black Lab, when he was having a nightmare. Her eyes fluttered open for a second and closed. Fuck. They really needed her in a hospital right now, probably in ICU, probably getting prepped for surgery. Who knew what was going on. Well, getting some nourishment inside her could not make it much worse. He bent to her ear and said, “Maia. Maia? Can you hear me?” A catch in the whimper, as if some thread of comprehension had snagged. Then a tentative moan like a question. “We’ve got to get some food and water in you, okay? It’s important.” Was it important? Without knowing if she had internal injuries, they couldn’t know whether feeding her would do more damage. Could it? He wasn’t a doctor. He felt his own panic rise up. Wynn had taken a wilderness EMT course one spring in the mountains of western North Carolina. He had learned to stop bleeding and splint a fracture, how to lower someone down a cliff on a backboard. None of it had prepared him for this.

  Jack held the water bottle and his demeanor had not changed. He had tugged calves out of bloody wombs with a chain and put down a bellowing cow in the snow with a shot in the forehead when his ministrations had failed. None of it was fun, and it was neither good nor bad.

  She took in one long volcanic breath and cried out, a sharp report of pain, and her eyes opened. “Try,” she said. Her first clear word since they’d found her. Wynn tipped up the bottle and trickled water into her half-open mouth and she blinked for a pause and he repeated until the bottle was empty. Then Jack spooned her the blueberry mash. She ate half a cup, good. The effort seemed to exhaust her. Before Jack could ask her what he needed to know, she rolled her head back and her eyes shuttered closed.