by Holly Green
“Yeah, dude, what were you looking at?” I ask.
Silence.
This was such a mistake.
* * *
We kick toward shore until we reach a spot we can both touch.
“Ready?” I ask, curling my hands along the gunnels underwater. “One, two, three.”
The water sucks at the hull as we pull the boat out of the river. It’s like trying to lift a tree, but finally we clear the surface and get the boat into the air. We roll it away from us and set it back on the water. I grab my water jugs, now floating around my waist, and put them back into their foam holders.
What a waste of time and energy.
We keep going.
My shirt clings to me and water drips rhythmically from the brim of my hat. We paddle hard. With each bend in the river, I imagine seeing my brother on the other side. I think, This is it. This is when I’ll catch him. I’ve already been in front of him twice. I can do it again. But after a couple of miles and another dam portage, it still hasn’t happened.
There’s no breeze to make being wet feel cooler. The trees don’t offer any shade. Sweat and river water drip down my neck and down my back. John Cullen glances over his shoulder at me a couple of times, but the only word between us is hut.
We haven’t even been on the water for two hours and have only gone about ten miles. It feels like two years already. Looking at the 250 miles ahead, they feel like the rest of my life.
The rest of my life trying to match John Cullen’s too-long stroke. The rest of my life wondering when we’re going to flip next. The rest of my life not catching my brother.
“I’m sorry about tumping the boat.” His voice is flat. Unconvincing. Just the kind of sorry I’d expect. Not that I expected one.
Apologizing is such an un–John Cullen thing to do.
“We’re lucky we’re not onshore right now, fixing a crack,” I say, because apparently I’m not ready to let this one go.
“Is that how you accept an apology?”
I swear I can see the way his lip curls up right through the back of his stupid head.
His paddle goes past his hip again when I’ve already got mine out of the water. We’ve got to sort this out.
And since he’s quasi-apologizing, maybe he’ll actually accept some coaching.
“You need to start pulling your paddle out earlier instead of going past your hip. It’s making your stroke too long and throwing our rhythm off. I can’t match your stroke and it’s bugging the hell out of me.”
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to make a shit sandwich?” he asks.
“A shit sandwich?”
A fly buzzes around my face and my shoulders ache.
“A shit sandwich. It’s when you sandwich the shitty thing you’re about to say between two nice things.”
Oh my god, he’s asking me to baby him. “Is that what they teach you in private school?”
“No, they taught me that in being-a-decent-person school. Where were you?”
“I was busy rebuilding my tree house.”
“Noted.”
His stroke is still too long.
“Okay, here goes,” I say. “It’s great that you’ve gone five minutes without flipping the boat. Your stroke sucks. Pull out at your hip and we’ll finish faster and never have to talk to each other again. Hut.” We switch sides. “How’s that for a shit sandwich?”
“Shitty.”
* * *
There were no shit sandwiches after that awful race between Dad and Johnny. No attempts to smooth things over and give constructive feedback. Definitely no victory burgers in lawn chairs, sharing stories about the race. We didn’t even stick around at the finish, and we usually stayed for hours. Dad showered. Mom, Tanner, and I packed up the chairs, cleaned out the canoe, and strapped it to the roof rack of the Subaru. We drove the two hours home. The first raindrops hit not far from our house, fat smacks on the windshield, followed by thunder. It didn’t compare to the thunder Dad was making, talking about bad calls and disagreements and Johnny lying down in the boat. But it was all background noise to me in the back seat, knowing my friendship with Cully was done for.
The storms continued for days. The river swelled, full of debris. Tanner left for baseball camp. Mazer and I spent the first few days curled on the couch watching movies. I didn’t even check on the tree house we’d been building. Everything about that tree house was washed in Cully, and I missed him like a limb.
But four days later, when the sky had cleared, it was time to get back to work. I carried a bag with a few tools across the property to the giant live oak that held the tree house. The platform and ladder were finished, and Cully and I had been working on the sides. It was almost finished. Almost ready to show Dad. I kept picturing him marveling over it, telling me I’d built it as well as any grown-up could. He’d see that I was ready to do all the stuff he and Tanner did.
I climbed the rope ladder to the hole in the platform and put my head through. Someone was already in there, lying on his back, reading a book—Cully.
My face cracked into a smile. “Hey,” I said, forgetting for a moment about the storm between our families.
Cully laid down his book and rolled onto his side to look at me.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t even say hi. No sign that he was glad to see me.
Right. We were enemies now. The night we got back from the race, I’d overheard Dad telling Mom, “I’m done. We can’t be friends with them anymore.”
“I don’t think you should be here,” I said.
His face curdled.
“What do you mean I can’t be here?” Cully asked, his voice as sour as his face. It was the first time I heard the shadow of Johnny Hink in him. I saw it in his scowl.
For a moment, my throat didn’t work. The words were stuck somewhere in there. “This is my tree house,” I finally forced out.
“You’re always saying it’s yours. But it’s not. It’s as much mine as it is yours.”
But that was just wrong. And not just because the tree was on the Scofield side of the property line. The whole thing was my idea. There’d been this tree-house-building book in the kids’ section at the library, and instead of being all, get an adult, it made it sound like you could do it on your own. And … and I’d wanted that. Dad and Tanner had been taking a blacksmithing class, learning how to make their own knives, and it was just like all the other activities they left me out of. They always thought I was too young or too slow or too something to join them.
And I was sick of it.
I wanted to show them what I could do. I wanted to stop being on the sidelines. And Cully knew it.
I read that book cover to cover. I scouted the entire property for the right tree. I scavenged wood from Dad’s scrap pile. Did extra chores and helped Ginny paint her house to get money for the rest of the materials. I watched YouTube videos about tree-house building. And yeah, Cully helped, but he didn’t do all that.
Cully rolled onto his belly and scooted closer to the hole, propping himself up on his elbows, staring me down, his face above mine. I couldn’t bear how different he was. How had I never seen this side of him? This side that was so much like his dad.
I could only stammer, “It’s a Scofield tree house.”
“We built this together.” He brought his hand to his forehead and touched the red mark above his eye. The scar he gave himself when he was carving his name in a board and the knife slipped. He’d needed a stitch.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He’d helped. But that didn’t make it his.
“Look, it’s not my fault your dad messed up. Not my fault my dad’s pissed at him,” Cully said, his tone a bit more gentle.
Wait, what? What kind of crap was Johnny Hink telling him?
“My dad didn’t mess up. Your dad was a bad partner. He wasn’t committed.”
“Your dad’s not as perfect as you think he is.” Cully’s voice was loud. His face twiste
d up again. “He almost got my dad killed!”
His words knocked the wind out of me. My face grew hot and my skin tingled.
Johnny Hink was awful. My dad was the best. How could Cully think so badly of him? We’d always been united against Johnny when he was being a jerk. Cully had practically lived at my house the week before the race because of a fight with his dad. How could Cully defend him now?
“Either you’re a liar or you’re stupid,” I finally said. “Nobody would believe your dad over mine.”
My eyes swam with tears as I climbed down the ladder.
I gave it three more days before I went back, half hoping Cully was there and half hoping he wasn’t. Maybe we could reach some sort of joint custody of the tree house agreement.
I took Mazer on that hot afternoon. He trotted ahead, stopping to sniff interesting things, knowing exactly where we were going. The same place we’d been a million times before. The tall grass tickled my legs. The sun beat down on the bare skin of my arms. Up ahead, Mazer circled the tree. But something was missing. The rope ladder. My eyes followed the trunk up to the branches, but it was gone. Everything was gone. I must have walked to the wrong tree. But how could I? I knew our property like I knew my own self.
My tree house was gone.
As I got closer, I saw them—planks of wood scattered under the tree, partially hidden by the tall grass. And on the very top, the board he had carved his name into. Cully.
He’d taken the whole damn thing apart. Every. Single. Board.
There’s a canoe up ahead. With two—no, three—people. Tanner.
“Faster,” I tell John Cullen.
“Ever heard of pacing yourself?” he asks, but he still kicks it up a notch, and even with our lousy mismatched strokes, we are cruising. He may have a terrible stroke, but he’s strong. In a couple of minutes we’re closer. Close enough for me to realize that their shirts aren’t bright yellow, they’re sea green. The Sirens.
My insides wilt. But just for a second, because passing a boat is passing a boat. Even if it’s not Tanner, it’s one boat closer to top five.
In another few minutes our bow is even with their stern, about five feet to their left. The driver, Carrie Miles, glances over at John Cullen, and then back to me.
“Heard you had teamed up, but I didn’t really believe it,” Carrie says.
“Is that Sadie and Cully?” Lisa Fisher calls out from the bow.
“Sure enough,” says Melissa Martinez. She’s got the middle.
We pull up even. Lisa kicks up the pace, keeping even with us.
“You see that boat that wiped out in the low water crossing back there?” Melissa asks.
“There were about three boats putting themselves back together when we went through,” I say. “Made our portage look like the right call.”
“We didn’t have a choice but to portage,” Carrie says. “Boat was caught sideways, blocking the whole river under the bridge. Think they lost a paddle.”
“Oof.” I eye the spare paddle snapped into a piece of foam epoxied to the inside of the hull. If one of us loses a paddle, that spare is our lifeline.
“What was that big dustup you and your daddy had at the start, Cully?” Carrie asks. Only she would be nosy enough to bring it up.
John Cullen takes a stroke and actually pulls out at his hip instead of past it. He keeps at the short strokes and picks up the stroke rate. We glide past the Sirens, leaving them in our wake.
11:51 A.M. SATURDAY
He keeps up the pace. We pass four more boats. None of them is Tanner. But we’re moving so fast. Eventually, one of them will be.
The sky is deep, deep blue and the river keeps turning. The birds are singing. I see the occasional log full of turtles sunning themselves, and once, the ripples of a snake swimming up ahead.
It’s way too soon to be thinking this, but we might be able to pull off top five.
My shoulders ache with every stroke, but I am so damn alive.
* * *
“Snack break,” I say when we hit the wide, still waters that stretch the two miles to Staples Dam.
I rip a cherry-flavored GU pack off the side of my boat and squeeze it into my mouth. It’s sweet and tart and amazing. I chase it with a handful of salty cashews I vacuum sealed last week with Tanner and tuck my trash into the mesh bag I’ve attached to the side of the boat. In less than a minute I’m still working on the cashews, but my paddle is back in the water.
Erica and Gonzo will be at the bottom of Staples to resupply us at the first official checkpoint. Then they’ll add our names to the official sign-in sheet, to prove we were there before the three p.m. cutoff. After three hours with John Cullen, I cannot wait to see them.
I manage the boat on my own as John Cullen takes a minute to eat, too, and pretty soon the cheers and clapping of the crowd rise above the noise of our paddles in the water. We pass another boat.
And there’s a white sign with blue letters, attached to the low bridge a hundred feet before the dam.
TEXAS RIVER ODYSSEY
MILE 16
KEEP PADDLING!
People stand on the bridge, cheering for us. A truck rumbles over the bridge as we paddle underneath. The left riverbank is all trees and a gray house on stilts. On the right there’s the kelly-green lawn of the big house up ahead. They open their land to the Odyssey every year. Kids play in the shallow water. Adults wade in up to their thighs. A handful of boats cluster around the right shore, just before the dam, pulling out to either portage down the stairs or run their boat around the house and down the hill.
“Portage right?” John Cullen asks.
“Left.” I press the rudder pedal, steering us to the faster route.
My ears are full of the roar of the water rushing over the dam and crashing into the river below. We pass under a branch that brushes the top of John Cullen’s hat. The nose of the canoe inches over the concrete wall of the dam. He stores his paddle under his seat and climbs onto the barrier. He pulls the boat forward, under the low canopy of leaves. I tuck my paddle away when I’m close. The boat rocks as I walk up the middle and put my feet into the water spilling over the dam. He jumps on the lower platform. I grab the stern rope. A couple of bank crews wait river left, but most of the spectators and the bank crews are scattered across the gravel and the river on the right. Erica and Gonzo wade into the water just before a kid arcs through the air on the rope swing hanging from that huge cypress. The splash drenches them both.
I scan the crowd for Dad’s tall frame or Mom’s dark hair. Mom’s probably at the bakery, but Dad has time. He was going to bank crew for Tanner and me. I exhale long and hard, trying to blow all the hope out of my body. He told me not to do this, so why would he want to watch us flip our canoe every couple of miles?
“Ready?” John Cullen’s eyes are on me, and they linger for a moment, even after I’ve said yes.
I lift the stern and he carries the bow down, feeding it into the water below. I lower the stern by the rope. He takes it and is already stepping into the water. We let the middle of the boat rest on the concrete for a moment and I jump to the platform. He swims out with the nose and I feed it to him before I step into the knee-deep water. I lean over the boat, holding it steady while he puts his hands on the gunnels, throws his body across the hull, and twists his butt into his seat. He hangs his legs out while I throw a leg across the boat and sit down.
The bow of another canoe noses into the water beside us as we push off.
“You see them over on the right?” I ask.
“Got it.”
We head for our bank crew and dodge an aluminum that portaged river right.
“You guys are doing great,” Gonzo says as we pull up beside them.
I dig a paddle into the water to hold us still for a moment before Erica grabs a gunnel. I detach the tubing from my water jug and throw the empty into the water next to Erica as she shoves a full jug into its space in my boat.
“Need a new bag of food
?”
“No.”
She holds out a hand. “Trash?”
I give her my empty GU packets and the wrapper from my cashews. She gives me a disapproving look.
“You’ve gotta eat more than this.”
“I will. It’s still early.”
“Now.”
I rip a GU off the side of the canoe and suck it down. Grape.
“Better.” She takes my trash and grabs the jug floating by her leg.
I nod, but I’m starting to regret that there’s a page about nutrition in the binder. “When did my brother come through?”
She glances at Gonzo, who’s deep in conversation with John Cullen.
“Don’t let her get in your head,” Gonzo says.
Erica’s eyes turn back to me. “Maybe five minutes ago.”
Oh my god. We’re still in striking distance. “Let’s go!”
“Hold up. I haven’t changed out Cully’s water,” Gonzo says.
“Then what have you been doing?” I ask. “Checkpoints aren’t social.”
John Cullen and Gonzo switch out water jugs and Gonzo takes his trash and I can’t stop jiggling my leg. It’s taking forever.
“Ready?” John Cullen asks, holding his paddle with one hand and scratching the back of his neck with his middle finger.
“I see that.”
“Good.”
As we paddle away, I glance back one more time.
No Dad.
12:31 P.M. SATURDAY
The sun is high in the sky. The air is still. Sweat drips off the soaked sweatband of my hat as I take stroke after stroke.
“I have to pee,” John Cullen says, so I’ll know he’s about to put his paddle down.
“Good.” It means he’s drinking enough. Double good, considering the dark gray sweat spread like a Rorschach test on his back. It looks like a stingray in a top hat.
But he doesn’t put his oar down. He keeps paddling. And paddling.
And now that I’m thinking about it, with each stroke we take, my bladder gets heavier and heavier.
“Sooooo?” he says.