The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  “Take ’em.”

  The old men stood and there they were, a dozen bluebills cupped and dropping toward the water, black chests and glossy dark green heads, white breasts and wings, scrubbing off speed, tilting from side to side, webbed feet the color of cold slate sprawled out before them like dive brakes. A perfect toll.

  They fired and fired again.

  Four birds hit the water.

  Ben threw a hand signal. “Fetch dead, boy.”

  Jake was over the top of the blind and gone in a long, low racing dive, murmuring low in his chest. He’d marked the birds as they fell and surged toward them, ignoring the decoys.

  The men broke their guns and pocketed the hot, still smoking hulls.

  “Six ducks each is the limit” Ben said. “But I call this a day.”

  Harry agreed. “We can’t eat more than two apiece.”

  By the time Jake had the ducks ashore they had torn down the blind, recovered the decoys, and were ready to go.

  “What’s next?”

  Ben looked out into the mainstream, the racing whitewater. “Gitche Gumee.”

  A fast hard run with the power of the Firesteel fueling their arms and backs. Wind and rain slashed their faces. The salmon were running too, but against the current. The men could see them working along the bottom, dark bronze with the mating urge that would end in a tattered, misshapen death. Brighter fish too, bigger and stronger than the kings and cohoes—steelhead. But a madness was in the men now, the fury of the river, and they could not pause for the cerebration required: fly selection, casting angles, knots and mends and retrieves. You move when the mood is upon you. All urgencies end in death. Upstream or down.

  The river sweeps left, then right. In the distance the men can see the highway bridge and beyond it the combers of Gitche Gumee whitecapped and booming as they emerge from an endless fog-bank. The canoe is moving fast on the strength of the Firesteel, closer, closer—a quarter mile to go now, two hundred yards . . .

  Parked at the bridge is Ben’s rust-scabbed Ford F-250. Men in camouflage slickers stand in its lee, huddled low against the rain. They carry rifles. Squatting on its skids beside the highway, Cardigan’s helicopter, the color and shape of a wet sand dune. Its rotors are idling. Someone spots the canoe and points. His words are carried away by the wind. A figure emerges from the truck. Cardigan, dressed in a Barbour coat. He trots over to the chopper and climbs aboard. Little Ned reaches out from the cockpit to give him a hand up. The men with the rifles fan out, sprawl prone behind the riprap in shooting positions. The Huey lifts off, tilts sideways against the wind, and whupwhups its way toward the canoe.

  “You men are under arrest.” Baby Ned on the bullhorn. “You are fugitives from the law. You killed game out of season. You trespassed on posted property. You murdered a helpless and valuable research animal. You discharged a firearm within 100 feet of an occupied dwelling. Throw your weapons over the side and pull in to the bank immediately. Or we will commence firing.”

  The Huey hovers overhead now, the downdraft from its rotors further roiling the water. Gun muzzles protrude from the side hatch. Cardigan kneels in there, haughty and triumphant. The chopper veers off to achieve a better firing angle.

  Ben flips Fritz the finger and the guns open fire. A gust from the lake whirls fog around the chopper and tilts it off balance. Harry grabs his shotgun and fires a load of goose shot at the blurring rotors. One of the blades sheers off near the rotor cap and the helicopter veers landward. The rifles from the shore pop shots at the bouncing canoe but the bullets fly wide or ricochet off the water—they score not a single hit.

  The debate is over. They’ve reached the twisted, rain-swollen stretch of raging rapids that nearly killed them fifty years ago. The Haystack looms out of the fog. They can still opt for an easy way out, leave the river and surrender, or hit for the far bank, split into the woods, elude Cardigan and his thugs, and hike to the highway, hire someone in town to drive them to Canada.

  But they cannot do that. Boys will be boys.

  They see Gitche Gumee glimmering cold and black as steel beneath the mist. It draws them on as it always has.

  Beyond the fog bank, far far away, lies Canada. Or possibly death.

  One last shot of adrenaline before they go.

  “Fuck it,” Ben says. “Don’t mean nothin’. Drive on.”

  Jake thumps his tail in agreement.

  The paddles dig for darkness.

  It never ends in comfort.