The Last McAdam

by Holly Ford

  ‘There’s no throttle,’ she yelled over the roar of the quickening water.

  ‘Shit.’ Tess didn’t blame him for trying it anyway, but he had no more luck with it than she had.

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Pray’ – Nate grabbed the oars – ‘and paddle. If we can get ourselves out of the main current, we might be able to make the bank.’

  ‘Which bank?’ Taking an oar, Tess gazed at the wide stretch of angry water. It seemed their friend the tree had overtaken them during the jet boat’s short flight. She could see it not much further down, lodged again in the middle of the next bend.

  Nate hesitated only slightly. ‘Head right.’

  The homestead side. Tess nodded. He bent his head, pitting his back against the current. She waited for the boat to turn.

  ‘Fuck.’ Shipping his oar, Nate burrowed in a side compartment.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’re holed.’

  Looking down, Tess realised the water she’d presumed had come in with Nate was continuing to rise.

  ‘Here.’ Throwing a cut-off milk container her way, he took hold of the oar again. ‘You bail. I’ll paddle.’

  Scooping as fast as she could, it took her a few moments to notice that the water in the bottom of the boat was beginning to change colour. What the hell? She glanced up at Nate. There was blood pouring down his left forearm, down his hand and the oar he was working, blood dripping fast from his sodden shirtsleeve.

  ‘Nate?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look at yourself.’

  Briefly, he did. ‘I’ll fix it up when we get to the bank.’

  ‘Give me the oar.’ Standing up, she took it from him. ‘You bail. I’ll paddle.’

  Jesus, the current was strong. No matter how hard she pushed right, the coiling water pulled them back to the centre. As the distance to the bend in the river closed, Tess dug deeper, fear mounting in her gut as cold and inevitable as the water Nate was trying to clear from the boat. They were only making progress towards one thing. She could hear the change in the note of the river now, the horrible suck and boil as it met the tree.

  Scrambling to his feet, Nate added his full weight to the paddle. Too late. The water here was a whirling drain and they were going down it. Together, they raised the oar to fend the boat away from the branches, but all they could do was soften the impact. There were several hollow bangs as they struck, a snapping of timber, a graunching of metal. Stumbling back against the seat, Tess waited to feel the river close over her head.

  It wasn’t until Nate reached for her, or she reached for him, the two of them shuffling together on all fours to huddle in front of the engine bay, that it dawned on her that the boat was steady. Stable, even. In the middle of all this surging water they were almost perfectly still, glued fast in the fork of a branch by the force of the current. For now, anyway.

  She listened to the deep roar as the river plunged below the main trunk a metre in front of them. ‘Is it going to suck us under?’

  ‘No.’ Nate let go of her hand, not sounding entirely convinced. ‘Not if we keep bailing.’

  ‘I should have let you paddle.’

  ‘I couldn’t have kept us off it either.’ He rested his head against the engine cover as he lifted another bail. ‘At least you picked us a good spot.’ Between them, the cover was slick with blood, trails of it darkening the water around their feet.

  ‘We need to do something about that arm.’ Tess eased open the tear in Nate’s soaking wet shirt, blood and river water running down her hands as she tried to peel the cotton away from the wound. ‘Is there a first-aid kit?’

  ‘Up the front.’

  ‘Put some pressure on it,’ she ordered him. She crawled towards the front of the boat, testing each placement of her hand. ‘Try to keep the arm elevated,’ she called back to Nate.

  ‘I’d rather keep us elevated,’ came the reply.

  She was ready to freeze, to retreat, the instant she felt the boat begin to shift under her weight. It didn’t. The hull stayed jammed tight.

  ‘Under the lifejackets,’ Nate called. Behind her, she heard the engine cover lift. ‘Bring the toolbox too.’

  Ducking under the dashboard, she saw for the first time that there was a small smear of blood on the top corner of the windshield, a scrap of cotton lodged in the sharp metal frame. Below the lifejackets in the nose of the boat, she found what she was looking for. It wasn’t the biggest first-aid kit she’d ever seen, but it would have to do. She hunted around for something else they could use to bail. Emptying an old ice-cream container of junk, she gathered it up along with the toolbox. There was an ancient-looking woollen picnic rug underneath. Tess grabbed that too.

  She crawled out between the seats to see Nate squatting in the stern, peering into the engine as he continued to bail. She hadn’t even felt him move. Getting to her feet, she made her way back down the boat with greater confidence.

  ‘Give me your arm.’ Tess knelt beside him. Willing herself to ignore the water mounting around them, she set to work, wiping away blood and shirt to reveal a jagged gash running from the point of his shoulder to his elbow. It looked deep, it looked ugly, and it looked way beyond the power of four Steri-Strips to close. As the blood welled up again, she pressed a dressing hard against it.

  ‘Here, I need you to hold this for a minute.’ Taking the bailer off him, she placed Nate’s other hand on the wound. Their eyes met. Tess shook her head. ‘We’ve got a minute. You can’t go on losing this much blood.’

  Working fast, she taped the dressing in place, but when Nate lifted his hand, she could see the pad was already soaking through.

  ‘Sit down,’ she told him. ‘Keep still, keep pressing as hard as you can, and keep your arm high.’ Digging the bailer into the rising water, she was relieved to see him obey, sitting down beside the toolbox, his arm propped on the back of the rear seat, the first-aid kit on his knee. She picked up the tempo, putting her back into clearing the floor, counting each bail as it went over the side. Seven, eight, nine …

  At the unmistakeable rip of duct tape, Tess glanced up to find Nate with a roll dangling from his mouth. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  He applied a strip to his bicep before he let the tape fall. ‘Closing the cut.’ He ripped off another. ‘I can’t sit here for fifteen minutes.’

  She jumped as a piece of floating wood thunked against the hull. He had a point. It felt like every bail she tipped out was running straight back in, but in many ways, a slow leak in the boat was the least of their worries. One shift of the tree, one decent log coming down behind them, and they were toast. The only way out was under power. Losing count, Tess started again. One, two, three …

  ‘Can you help me with this?’

  Nate had his arm up around his neck, struggling with the knot of an elevation sling. Quickly, Tess tied it for him and got out of his way as he returned to the engine.

  One, two, three … Either she was slowing down, or the leak was getting faster. Four, five, six, seven … Was it her imagination? Tess fixed her eye on a scuff mark on the fibreglass just above the level of the water.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ she asked Nate.

  ‘No,’ he said briskly. ‘Everything up here looks fine. We must have damaged the intake.’

  ‘Nate.’ The water was a centimetre over the scuff mark now. ‘I’m losing down here. I’m sorry. I need some help.’

  Dropping the engine cover back into place, he joined her on the floor, digging the ice-cream container into the water.

  ‘A damaged intake,’ Tess said, watching her next mark, ‘doesn’t sound like something you can fix.’

  ‘Not here.’ Nate let out a long breath. ‘Not in this water. Even if I could get under there and hang on, I wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing.’ He paused. ‘Tess, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  The level wasn’t going down, but it had stopped getting higher
. She was becoming more, not less, aware of how cold the water was. Her hands were starting to burn with the pain of it, and the desire to get out was almost overwhelming. Tess forced herself to keep bailing. Slowly, slowly, the water level began to drop.

  Beside her, Nate was shaking. She was wet to the waist, but his whole body was soaking.

  ‘Take a break,’ she told him. ‘Grab that rug, go wrap yourself up in the front, get out of the wind for a while.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Well, at least get some dry gear on.’

  She wasn’t sure if he was shivering or shaking his head. ‘My pack’s gone,’ he said.

  Shit. Of course it was. So was hers, or they’d have been tripping over them on the floor. All the gear in the back of the boat had gone, thrown out along with Nate.

  Tess resumed her count. Better to concentrate on that than the river’s roar. It was distracting her too from other numbers creeping into her head. Best case scenario – if they didn’t drown first – they had another seven hours of this, at least, before anybody even noticed they were gone. They’d set out to do a day’s work. It would be five o’clock, at the earliest, before Stan might begin to think it was strange she wasn’t home.

  And then what? When he was worried enough, he’d call Harry and Mitch, they’d drive down to the river, find the empty boat trailer, and know that something was wrong. And by that time it would be almost dark. And in the dark, no one would be able to find them.

  ‘Tess,’ Nate said slowly, ‘there’s something I want to say to you.’

  ‘No.’ She refused to look at him. ‘Say it to me tomorrow. Say it the next day.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I mean, I could. But since we’ve got a bit of time on our hands at the moment, I might as well do it now.’

  Tess glared at the water, choking on the lump in her throat as she continued to bail.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nate said.

  ‘I told you, this isn’t your fault.’

  ‘I don’t mean about this.’ His voice was getting woozier. ‘I wish I’d never asked you to dance.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said wryly.

  ‘I wish I’d just come over and sat down, and talked to you. That was what I was going to do. But I didn’t. And I’m sorry. Because I think if I had, if we’d got to know each other, things might have been different with us. And I think … I think I would have liked that.’

  There was a noise, a whimper, caught in her throat. She wasn’t sure if she’d made it out loud.

  ‘Tess?’ Nate stopped bailing.

  Trying to hold it together, she looked up at him at last. He’d passed out, the sling around his neck drenched in blood.

  ‘You fucking idiot.’ Taking him under the arms, Tess hauled him out of the water, collapsing backwards into the seat, his head on her shoulder. ‘Don’t you dare die on me.’ She curled her body around him as best she could, pressing his icy face to her neck, her hand hard to the wound. ‘If you leave me here’ – she touched her lips to his wet hair – ‘I’ll kill you.’ Grabbing the rug with her free hand, she wrapped it around them both.

  Now she was counting breaths. One … two … three … As, to her great relief, Nate’s ribcage continued to rise and fall, Tess made an attempt to run through her options logically.

  Nate was going to die if she didn’t keep doing what she was doing right now. She was certain of that. And she couldn’t do it and bail. Not effectively enough to keep them afloat. But if she didn’t bail, the boat was going to sink and – almost certainly – they were both going to die. Tess held him a little tighter. She couldn’t bail fast enough by herself anyway. If she did leave Nate to bleed out or die of hypothermia, whichever came first, the boat was still going to sink and she was still, almost certainly, going to die too. She’d just have longer to think about it, that was all.

  Tess looked across the churning river. There was a chance she could make it onto the tree. If the branches between the boat and the main trunk held, if she didn’t slip, if her weight wasn’t the final straw that tipped it loose from its sticking place and sent the whole thing bucking off downstream. She closed her eyes, feeling Nate’s breath on her neck. There was no chance she could get him up there. So what was her plan? To sit on a log and watch him die?

  Having satisfied herself that she wasn’t just sitting there holding onto him because she was scared, and it was easy, and the thing she most wanted to do, Tess stayed where she was, averting her eyes from the water mounting on the floor. At least she wasn’t cold anymore. She could just about drift off herself.

  With a shake of her shoulders, she redoubled her pressure on Nate’s arm. Miracles did happen. Help could come before they sank. It was up to her to make sure they were both alive when it got there.

  As the minutes passed, and the exhaustion that seemed to have taken hold of her started to lift, Tess discovered that sitting still in a boat while it sank wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to get up, get out, do something. The water was up to her calves, and it was starting to swirl.

  It couldn’t be long now. As the bailer bobbed past her, she picked it up with her free hand. She was buying them seconds, she knew. Any moment the weight of the water would bury the stern, they’d tip, and then they’d be down – game over. She didn’t know much about boats, but she knew it would happen fast. Would there be any warning at all? Time for them to get clear?

  Abandoning the bailer again, Tess dragged Nate higher, getting her feet up on the seat, making sure his were free. Positioning them both as close to the side as she dared, she tightened her grip on his lifejacket. As soon as she felt the bow lift, she’d jump back and somehow, she’d hold on. To him, and whatever the hell else she could find that wasn’t sinking.

  She’d catch one of these branches, and it would hold them, and she would hold Nate. Maybe, if she worked them along, they could get clear of the tree and ride the river to … to somewhere the current cut into the bank, and she could pull them out. She checked her grip on Nate again. There was rope in the boat, but she didn’t dare use it because … She eyed the river surging against the tree. Because unless she did catch a branch, unless she could hold on, they were going straight under there, into whatever mess was snagging the tree in place, and Nate deserved a chance of his own to come out the other side.

  The water was lapping the edge of the seat, and all she could think, in the moment the hull started to shift, was what a waste it was. Of her, and him, and everything that he was, all that courage and confidence, of that infuriatingly beautiful, heartbreaking, heart-stopping smile. Here it came. Here it came. The boat was tilting like a seesaw, water beginning to stream to the back of the boat. Braced for the jump, she watched the stern lower slowly towards the river’s furious rush. It was centimetres away now. Go, she ordered herself. Go now, for god’s sake. It’s not going to stay slow, it’s going to –

  With a deep thunk, the boat stopped. Tess blinked. That was it? That was as far down as it could go? She heard herself start to laugh. Jesus. Jesus. They were so stuck they couldn’t sink?

  Nate stirred in her arms. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘We didn’t sink.’ She rested her chin against the collar of his lifejacket, still laughing like a crazy person. ‘I didn’t bail, and we didn’t sink.’

  As the boat listed sideways, they both let out a yelp. Nate looked around. ‘Maybe we should keep bailing.’

  ‘You don’t get to wake up and start giving orders.’ Even good ones. ‘Let’s take a look at that arm.’

  He got almost upright before he slumped back against her chest. ‘Nate?’ Tess put her hand to his cheek. ‘Nate?’ Shit. He’d passed out again. Twisting around, she took a good look at him. His skin was grey, but he was indisputably alive and breathing. Gingerly, she untied the bloody sling from his neck. The cut had stopped bleeding. Extricating herself, Tess propped his arm over the back of the seat, wrapped him up, and started bailing.

  ‘What�
�s happening?’ Nate’s voice was groggy.

  ‘You tried to sit up and blacked out.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Just stay where you are, or it’ll happen again.’ Tess shot him a small, wry smile. ‘Get some rest. We’re not going anywhere.’

  She watched him try to focus. It took a while. As the angle of the boat and the proximity of the river’s surface registered, he started to struggle up again. She saw his consciousness waver, but this time he lay back before it was gone.

  ‘This thing could go any moment,’ he said, several deep breaths later. ‘We should try to get onto the tree. We’ll be safer up there.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tess carried on bailing. ‘After you.’

  ‘You go first,’ he managed. ‘I’ll follow you.’

  She almost laughed again. Yeah, right. ‘I’m good here, thanks. You get yourself up there, I’ll think about coming to join you.’

  ‘Tess, you’ve got to get out. This boat’s going down.’

  ‘You’d think so,’ she agreed. ‘But it hasn’t so far.’

  She lost track of how much time had passed, but she was very tired and the boat was very full when she heard Nate speak again.

  ‘You’re still here,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he told her. ‘You can go. I’m okay staying here.’

  Tess looked him over. Was he getting hypothermic again? He wasn’t sounding too lucid. ‘If you’re okay here then so am I,’ she said carefully. ‘We are in’ – she paused – ‘the same boat.’

  ‘Give it up,’ he said. ‘Get out. You staying here isn’t going to change anything, and I – I’m okay. I won’t be the first McAdam to go down in this river.’

  ‘How does that make it better?’

  ‘It kind of … it kind of makes sense, in a way.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. How can it make any sense?’

  ‘It’s not like I had plans. I never wanted to leave this place anyway.’

  ‘O-kay.’ Manoeuvring him up in the seat, Tess resumed her position behind him. ‘That’s enough talking for you, and enough bailing for me.’

  ‘Tess.’ She could only just hear him. ‘Climb the fucking tree.’