The River

by Peter Heller

  They ate blueberries themselves until they were bloated. They knew they’d get the shits, but what choice did they have? They drank their fill of water and then Wynn carried her back to the boat and they shoved off.

  * * *

  Replay of the morning. Steady paddle. Except that now their muscles were tired and sore and the wind came in flat gusts upstream or quartered across from the northwest and then they could smell the smoke with the intensity of a campfire that blows in your face. More acrid and dense, though; more char. It smelled like devastation. And then, in late afternoon, they saw the first flocks of birds.

  They were haphazard squadrons of songbirds, forest birds, colorless, in chaotic formations, mostly silent and fast winging east across the river. There were chickadees and tiny warblers and waterthrush, olive flycatchers, kinglets and crows. The wrens and warblers cried and peeped as they flew in a chorus of constant questioning, maybe panic, and the reedy squeaks rained down like gusts of weightless hail. Then came waxwings, woodpeckers, flickers flashing yellow. And the larger lake birds, the rare heron the color of fog beating out the slow cadences of lunar time, the cranes, the loons in twos and threes, sailing overhead with the singular swiftness of arrows. No raptors yet, which the boys found curious. They watched with speechless fascination and often found themselves stilled, not paddling, drifting against the wind and gawking at the sky. Also, it could not be good. Neither said a word.

  When they paddled they paddled hard, as hard as they had ever done. Jack did not want to get there in the dark with no options but to sit out the freezing night with no fire—he wanted to devise a plan, he wasn’t sure what, and have enough light to enact it. The sun lowered to the tops of the tallest spruce and made a molten fringe of the trees; it seared and spindled them as if they had already burned. The temperature dropped. Wynn dug out the sleeping bags and covered her and they kept paddling into the frail light, the river surface gone to slate, then a casting of flat burnished silver that tilted into the uneven darkness of dusk.

  They passed the rock island with the two trees and were swept into a tight left bend and they heard the buffeting rush of the rapid carried up the half mile of river like the sound of wind. The river began to straighten and they knew that soon on the right they would see a small shale beach pale in the twilight. Their portage. That’s what the book had said. Jack turned suddenly and very sharply said, “Head to the right bank. Pull out. Now.”

  “What?”

  “Do it, Wynn. Crank to the right. Hurry the fuck up.”

  “That’s steep bank.” It was. “Nothing but trees.” It was. “We’ve got to get her out, the easier the better, and lay her down. Get her warm. The book said there’s an easy beach landing.”

  “Head in. There.”

  “No. Jesus, what’s wrong with you? She’s gonna go back into sh—”

  The word died in his mouth. Jack had set his paddle against his seat. He had picked up the rifle and he was aiming it at Wynn.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I’m not bluffing. Brother, you point the bow to the bank, there.” Jack tossed his head toward a shallow cove and an eroded cut where maybe a game trail ramped into the water from thick woods. “Point it and get us there. Now.”

  For a second Wynn was stunned. He thought, Has he gone fucking crazy? But he did. He ruddered hard and reached forward and laid into the stroke, a stroke to keep them moving cross-current, and they bumped the bank and Jack hopped out with the painter rope and the rifle slung over his shoulder. He tied it off fast to a young fir and jerked his head toward the woods and the thickening darkness. “Get out. Leave her. Won’t be long. Hurry up. I got the boat.” The canoe spun stern into the bank and Jack crouched and steadied it as Wynn shimmied forward, around and over her, and hopped out. He was towering over Jack and he might have shoved him into the water but he didn’t. Jack could come up shooting, who knew what. What the hell was going on? The day at its end—burnished in the last reluctant light—seemed to warp and twist and twang like a bent saw blade.

  Wynn stood over Jack. “What the fuck,” he whispered.

  Jack glanced up at him. “I know, Big. Just frigging follow me. You’ll thank me.” The tone had softened. He sounded like his friend. “Let’s go.”

  Wynn did, follow him. What choice did he have? Into the true night under the trees, downriver, and out to the margin of brush along the bank where they found another game trail, probably moose. They moved as fast as they could and could see enough to make out the shapes of river stones in the dirt, the tufts of grass and moss, the orange bark of the bigger spruce, barely ruddy in the dusk. They came to another scrim of trees and the sky opened and lightened beyond them and they knew they had come to the clearing of the take-out, what must be the opening of a beach, a camp, an overlook. They could hear the rapid now as a proximal thunder.

  Jack put his finger to his lips and unslung the rifle and they moved forward slowly. Crouched in twilight like two predators, they pushed through a stand of tall grass and looked down on a sandy bench with two old fire rings. The bench was fifteen feet above the water and beyond it they could see the whitewater of the heavy rapid fluorescing like snow. A trail wound from the camp around the cut-rock overlook down to a small gravel beach they could partly see. The beach was the mandatory take-out for the portage around the falls. And at the edge of the rock ledge, looking directly down on the gravel bar, lay a man. A man in a broad-brimmed safari hat.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” Wynn whispered right against Jack’s ear.

  “He’s holding his 12-gauge shotgun is what he’s doing. Waiting for us. You can see it in his hands. His hands are fucking shaking—you can see it from here.”

  Wynn huffed. It was an exhalation of surprise, of shock, of profound disappointment, as if he’d just looked down at his compass and the needle was spinning. Pierre was not spinning or moving, he was preternaturally still. “Where’s all his shit?” Wynn whispered. “His camp?”

  “It’s all packed in the canoe below. Ambush, flee. That’s his plan. It’s not a very good one. A search party will surely come. I guess he might be thinking to hack us all up into bits with his ax and throw everything in the river. Send the canoe over the falls so whatever gear is left looks like a flip. The headline will be ‘River Accident.’ ”

  Wynn had no response. He’d had the wind knocked out of him playing hockey and it usually took a few panicked seconds to find his breath. He felt like that now.

  Jack was on one knee. He brought up the scoped rifle and twisted his left arm through the leather sling and sighted.

  “What do you wanna do?” Wynn said, more loudly. “Shoot him where he lies?”

  Jack had his eye to the scope and the sling twisted tight against his arm. “What do you wanna do?” he said. “Truss him up and carry him for a week down the river, back to back with the wife he tried to kill?”

  Jack felt Wynn’s hand grip his right arm. Jack’s right forefinger lay over the trigger guard. Wynn shook him. “Whoa!” Wynn whispered, urgent. “We’ve gotta talk to him. We’ve gotta know. He still might think we killed her, he still might be scared of us. Or those Texans.” He didn’t know. “Jack! Fuck.” Wynn shook him. “You can’t just murder him! We’ve gotta confront him.”

  Jack lifted his eye off the scope and studied his buddy. The dusk was thickening. If they were going to shoot anybody through a 4-12X scope, it would have to be soon. Okay, Wynn needed closure, clarity, whatever the hell, let’s go. “Okay, Wynn. Fuck it. This is on you. This is it. On three we’ll move down the slope slow. I’ll cover him. We’ll get as close as we can so he knows he’s cooked.”

  Wynn nodded.

  “One, two, three.” They stood. They pushed out of the trees and the tall grass and stepped down the slope. Jack carried the rifle in front of him. It was grass, moss, rocks. Pierre was sixty feet away. Wynn stepped on a sloping root and h
is right foot skidded along it and he loosed a rock and nearly stumbled. The rock clacked on the stones below. And Pierre jumped. He wheeled, crouched, and Jack saw the muzzle of the shotgun flash. Spit flame. And the explosion at close quarters. Branches and leaves tore behind them to their left. Jack shouldered the rifle and sighted. He had him; Pierre lunged for the trail. Jack swung and led him and fired. He might have, might have nailed him. But Pierre had leapt behind the outcrop. It was a perfect shot. Jack was running. Running down the slope and looking for the kill as he would an elk. The trail vanished behind the guard rock of exposed ledge. He ran. He would find the man crumpled behind it. He would have zero remorse. He half turned once to see if Wynn was hit. Wynn was behind him, good. Jack loosed his feet down the slope and jumped to the sand on the bench and brought the rifle up again, both eyes open, and came around the ledge and—

  Nothing. If the man had been hit it hadn’t been fatal. Jack blinked. Fuck. The man’s hat lay on the sand of the trail like a giant fungus. Jack ran. He fast-stepped down the rocky steps and sand of the narrow trail. It dropped to the river and he leapt onto the broken shale of a beach and there was the canoe. The canoe on the black current, the man a shadow now, the boat sliding past a point of granite into the tight right bend. Jack lifted the rifle, both eyes open, and half sighted through the dim scope, the shadow sliding across it, and he fired, the blast of flame, and the canoe and the man slid past the rock and out of sight. Into the charry night.

  * * *

  Because that’s what it reeked of. Charcoal. They could not see the fire, no plumes clouded the stars, no glow like some city crowned the trees, but it reeked of burned-out forest and scorched ground, and all night they heard the flurry and peeps of birds flying over.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jack did not speak. Whatever jeopardy they had been in before, they were in more now. Pierre would know with certainty where they would camp—here—and he could ambush them while they slept or sat by the fire. But they needed a fire. She was shivering again. She needed hot liquid, they would make up one of the freeze-dried meals and feed it to her; she needed sustenance and rest. So. Jack would let Wynn care for her and he would set a perimeter and patrol it.

  The night was clear. No clouds tonight, no moon, but a swarm of stars like sparks, against which flew the high wind-strewn shadows of the birds. Steady wind from the north. The stars illuminated the night enough. Good. If the man had gone only just around the bend and was working his way back for an attack, he could only come along the ledge rock or out of the line of trees to the east. The trees were back far enough that he would not be able to shoot from cover. Good.

  They built a fire because they had to. They wrapped her in the bags again and warmed stones and when she came halfway to consciousness they fed her spoonfuls of sweetened and warmed water and the hot meal they’d made in its foil pack. Then they laid her back down and she slept. They ate blueberries and felt the exhaustion rise in their bodies like a ground fog and they knew they needed to catch fish or some other animal. Wynn had hunted in Vermont, but Jack didn’t trust him to secure the camp from a human attacker: Wynn might see the man crawl out of the woods and maybe even put him in the crosshairs, but he wasn’t sure he would shoot him. Wynn would want to ask him why he was so scared; maybe they could work everything out, none of this could be as base and horrific as it seemed. So Jack watched Wynn set up the tent and told him to take the first sleep, he’d sit with her by the fire, but he did not intend to wake him. He braced himself to keep vigil all night.

  She slept. They’d tugged the wool hat down over her ears and pillowed her head with a pile of fir needles and covered those with the hoods of the sleeping bags. Less blocky and hard than one of the life vests. They had talked about whether to put her on her side so she wouldn’t aspirate, but they hadn’t seen her have any trouble breathing yet, or vomit or spit up in her sleep or coma or wherever she drifted, and so they thought she would be more comfortable on her back. They would watch her, though. Jack sat on a rock covered with his own life vest for warmth because the night was cold. He laid a couple of larger sticks on the fire and looked at her face. The swelling had come down today and he could see the planes of her cheeks for the first time, the bruising now a blush of pink edged with purple or black like something slowly smoldering. Maybe he thought that way because he could smell the burn, strong when the wind shifted a little more from the west. It was somehow consoling, not creepy, with the birds flying over. They were just reedy scatterings of sound over the rush of the rapid, and shadows more of movement than substance against the stars; they were saving themselves from whatever cauldron and it made him feel that they, the three of them, were not alone. One of his classmates at high school in Granby had become a hotshot firefighter in Idaho and had died in the infamous White River Complex when seven firefighters had been pinned against a ridge in a sudden wind shift and overrun. The boy had deployed his personal fire shelter against the ground and Jack thought he must have prayed as he huddled inside it, blind, and heard the trees exploding. He was nineteen.

  He and Shane had lost cattle twice in fires. He never again wanted to be on horseback and in the path of a burn while he and his father tried to haze cow-calf pairs off the mountain. All they had to worry about now was themselves. Themselves. His mind was wandering and he forced himself to scan the edge of the trees back of the clearing, which he could see well enough by starlight. And the head of the trail, which was only thirty feet away.

  He scanned, but still he wondered what had really happened. Had the man really swung a rock at his wife’s skull in some rage, or in some more calculated blindside, and then chickened out from strangling or braining her and just covered her with moss and duff where she lay? They must have planned the trip together—they had been out for some days already, out on the lakes because he and Wynn had not heard any planes. So the couple were functional partners at least in the sense of the barest logistics, in moving the canoe over water, in making camp. They had planned the trip together, packed together, must have shared the route-finding, they were in God’s country, among moose and loons, had slept under benign constellations—what could have brought them to blows, to murder? No telling, truly. Nothing but woods, then taiga, then tundra and mudflats, then the sea, nothing but the cries of birds, maybe coyotes, maybe wolves, sweeps of rain, the mutterings of wind for hundreds, even thousands of miles in any direction. Whatever malevolence the couple had ignited they had brought with them. That puzzled him. Why come so far if you were doing so badly? As people, as husband and wife? Why come way the hell up here?

  Fuck: was that something moving against the wall of trees? No? No. He needed to stay on top of it, he was getting drowsy. Exhausted muscles and not much food weren’t helping. He thought of the pale hungry Windigo that stalked this country: it flickered at the corner of the eye but could never be truly seen; no matter how many people it consumed, it was never satiated, it stayed gaunt and voracious. He reached for the sack of blueberries and ate another handful. How long could you live on these? How long could you shit your guts out every day? They needed some meat.

  He stood, stretched his arms, slung the rifle, and stepped off fifteen feet to pee. He was facing the river and he could smell the crashing water, the sediment in it and the spray, and he could see what the sluice of turbulence was doing to the dark. It was shredding the night and maybe his peace of mind. At least the violence was keeping him awake.

  His mind drifted to the other violent and beautiful river. He had forced himself to ride his quarterhorse Duke back up the canyon of the Encampment just once. It was the summer before college, seven years after his mother had died there, and he had taken his father’s truck and the little two-horse trailer that hitched to the ball, not the gooseneck, and he had loaded Duke and they had driven north through Steamboat to Walden and turned up the North Platte and then forked up into the Encampment, and he had taken the Highline Road through the s
teep hills of lodgepole and spruce woods to Horseshoe Park and the top of the canyon. He didn’t take a packhorse and he didn’t tell his father where he was going and Shane didn’t ask. He and Duke camped in the park as the family had seven years before, and he put the gelding out on a picket—he wasn’t worried about him getting tangled up in the line, he was a mellow camper—and Jack fell asleep in his bag in the back of the truck with the sound of Duke chomping wheatgrass and his occasional snort and a couple of crickets. The low slip of the river. He made himself think about nothing. In the morning he made a fire and made coffee and ate a power bar and then he saddled up and they rode. It was mid-August and the little river was low and green over the myriad colors of the stones. It flowed gently in the flats and in the riffles it fell with the capricious release of a man whistling as he rode. So different from the June highwater throb and surgings of that other time. He rode through the sage and grass clearings along the bank, the paintbrush and lupines, and into the big trees, and when they got to the true gorge and the river spilled away from the trail and they were high above it, he pushed Duke, carefully, but did not pause, and when he got to the sloping rock slab he was sure was the one and looked down into the gorge at the ledgy drop that was all boulders now—nothing like the white torrent—he clucked twice and urged his horse across and they rode out of the canyon. That was it. He did not make himself ride back up. He talked to a lady in Encampment who had two horses in her yard and she let him turn Duke in, and he hitched a ride with two fishermen back up to his truck. He took one more look at the river running low and clear and drove down to town to pick up his horse. He had hay and oats in the trailer and he fed and watered Duke and loaded him up and drove home. He cried on the way. Once or twice, maybe more. At Hot Sulphur Springs he cried so hard the road blurred. He didn’t know why, why then. He never told his father.