by Jeff Strand
It scraped against another large rock.
Not to criticize a long-dead pirate, but this should’ve been on the map. A jagged little line, if nothing else.
The river curved to the right just ahead of us, and we were headed very, very quickly toward the riverbank. The boat wasn’t going to turn on its own.
We ran aground with enough force to knock everybody over.
“Is everybody okay?” Ignacio asked.
“Eh,” I said.
“I hate to say this,” said Henrietta, “but the terrible river conditions don’t change our plan. We have to keep going.”
Roger and I climbed out of the boat, pushed it back into the current, and jumped back in again. The boat, now facing forward, shot down through the rapids, like a flume ride that would probably end in all of our deaths.
We narrowly avoided another large rock.
I wondered how long bad sections of river usually lasted. Would this clear up at some point, or were we going to be suffering through this until the river spat us out into the ocean?
The boat turned sideways again, providing a much larger target for the rock up ahead. It was starting to feel like those rocks had been placed there on purpose just to mess with us. Without anybody shouting a warning, all four of us seemed to realize that we were going to smash into this rock, hard, and we all braced ourselves for impact.
The impact knocked everybody over. The boat spun around, careened off another rock, and then turned completely over.
I plunged into the river.
I swam to the surface and whacked my head against something so hard I thought I might’ve cracked my skull open. I emerged from the water and saw that I’d struck my head against the boat, which was still upside-down, sideways, and moving along at the same pace that I was.
I tried to call out for the others but my mouth was full of water.
As I held on to the boat as tightly as I could, I looked back and saw Henrietta in the water behind me. But the boat quickly picked up speed and left her behind.
Somebody’s legs came into view on the other side of the boat. Roger’s.
Then the boat struck a low-hanging tree branch and Roger apparently lost his grip. He flailed in the water behind me as the boat continued to move forward at an unnervingly fast speed.
There was obviously no way I was going to be able to turn it upright until the river calmed down or we ran aground again, but I tried to pull myself out of the water to decrease the chances that I’d also be left behind and we’d lose the boat entirely. I’d just have to trust that Roger and Henrietta would be all right.
I managed to climb onto the top. I saw Ignacio on the other side, trying to do the same.
There was another rock, the biggest one yet, in the middle of the river, right where we were headed.
I pointed to it and called out a warning.
Ignacio glanced back over his shoulder, then frantically tried to pull himself up onto the boat.
I leaned over the side and grabbed his hand.
I strained to pull him out of the water as the boat headed straight for the rock. It might have been better for him to just let go of the boat completely, let it pass over him, and try to grab the other side, but there wasn’t time to work out a detailed plan of action. I just had to pull him to safety.
He was halfway out.
It felt like we were picking up even more speed.
He got his feet out of the water and braced them against the side of the boat.
Ignacio was still in extreme danger if we bashed into the rock, but if we could get him on top of the boat with me he’d be okay, at least until the boat crashed and catapulted us into the raging river.
I pulled him up.
He lost his foothold and slid halfway down into the water. I kept my tight grip on his hand, but he pulled me down with him.
This next second had the potential to be devastating.
The boat smashed into the rock with so much force that I thought it might split the boat in half.
Ignacio was spared none of the impact.
Blood and water sprayed all over me as the boat spun around and continued on its way. Ignacio was imbedded in a huge dent in the center, his head bobbing around as if the bones in his neck had simply ceased to exist.
I screamed.
I didn’t let go of his hand, even though if he was somehow still alive, his internal injuries would be so severe that he wouldn’t survive a trip to a nearby hospital in an ambulance, much less being stranded out in the middle of the rainforest.
About a minute later, part of his body caught on something beneath the surface and was yanked out of my grip. He went under the boat and popped up behind it, facedown. A moment later he went under again and didn’t emerge.
I screamed again.
Though the rapid water didn’t relent, a couple of minutes later the boat struck a shallow area near the edge of the river and ceased moving. I wanted to just lie on top of it for an extremely long time and do some more screaming, but now my concern had to switch to Roger and Henrietta. If they were still being swept away in the current, I might be able to get in front of them.
I waited.
And waited.
They shouldn’t be too far behind me. If they hadn’t shown up, this could be a good sign that they’d managed to get out of the water or at least grab a tree branch, or it could be a bad sign that they were dead. Maybe Roger’s corpse had passed right by me, just under the surface of the water.
“Roger!” I shouted. “Henrietta!”
Nothing.
I shouted their names again and again.
They might not be dead. The rapids were loud. They could be safely out of the river, just out of sight, and not able to hear me.
But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do right now. I didn’t want to abandon the boat. If the current started to pull it free, I needed to be here to try to keep from losing it. Despite the dent, I assumed that if we could get it turned over, it would still carry us down the river.
Couldn’t turn it over myself, though.
If Roger and Henrietta were gone, I’d be stuck here without a usable boat.
One crisis at a time. For now, to maintain my sanity, I had to assume that they were still alive. Everything would be okay.
I hoped that being smashed into the rock had killed Ignacio immediately. It made me physically ill to think that he might have gone through the agony of drowning right after that. He was a good guy.
I kept calling out to them.
And then Henrietta answered. I couldn’t tell if she said “Andrew?” or not, but she said something.
I shouted her name. She shouted mine.
I figured there was no compelling reason for us to continue trying to shout a conversation over the sound of the river. It wasn’t as if I’d be difficult to find. I sat down on the boat and waited. I tried to think of something upbeat, but instead my brain kept replaying the moment where Ignacio got crushed between the rock and the boat over and over, sparing me none of the visuals or the sound. I quite honestly was surprised that my brain didn’t do it in slow motion.
A few minutes later, I saw Henrietta. She was on the riverbank, walking by herself. She gave me a half-hearted wave.
When she reached my spot, she waded back into the river and was able to make it to the boat without having to swim. She tapped her mouth. “Knocked out a tooth. Didn’t have many to spare.”
“Have you seen Roger?”
She shook her head. “Have you seen Ignacio?”
For a split second I considered lying, since she was the one who’d withheld information to keep up our morale. But then I realized that would be pointless. “Yeah. He...he was right here when this happened,” I said, tapping the dent on the boat.
“I don’t get it.”
“He got crushed between the boat and a rock.”
Henrietta gasped and put her hand over her mouth.
“I don’t know where his body went,” I said. “I won’t be abl
e to tell his family anything except that it got swept away in the current.”
“Let’s take ten seconds of silence to honor him,” said Henrietta. “Then, as sad as it is that he’s gone, we need to move on to more pressing concerns.”
We were silent for a few seconds.
“Okay,” said Henrietta, who apparently had started timing the ten seconds from to honor him instead of more pressing concerns. “We’re much worse off than we were before, but that still doesn’t mean we have to be all nihilistic. Tell me about your friend Roger. If he got separated from his boat in the middle of river rapids, is he more likely to be alive or dead?”
“Alive.”
“Good. We can work with that. If he was walking, he’d be smart enough to stay close to the river’s edge so we could find him, right?”
“Yes.”
“And he’d walk downriver, not upriver, right?”
“Yes.”
“Even if he took a nasty hit on the head and was disoriented?”
“That I can’t answer.”
“We’ll go with yes. You seem to be doing okay, after all.”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding from the scalp.”
“Oh.” I touched my head and winced. My index finger was pink. “I bashed it on the bottom of the boat.”
“Well, I don’t see any brains leaking out, so we’ll assume you’re okay.”
“Let’s drag the boat a little bit this way,” I said, pointing. “Stabilize it some more so it doesn’t get swept away before we get back.”
“It looks pretty solid.”
“No. No, no, no. If we leave the boat where it has the potential to get caught in the current, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that it will be gone when we return. One hundred percent.”
“All right,” said Henrietta. We dragged the boat a little further to the left, so that even with my luck it seemed like it would stay in place.
“He might need to be rescued,” I said. “We should each take a separate side, so that nobody has to swim across the worst of the river if we guessed wrong.”
“Makes sense. The side I was walking on was relatively easy to navigate. The other side looked like a nightmare. Which side do you prefer?”
I wasn’t sure if this was a chivalry test or an intelligence test. “I...guess I’ll take the nightmare side.”
She smiled. “Trying to get you some, huh?”
“What? No, I—”
“I’m trying to keep the mood light, Mayhem. I’d give you the best ride of your life but I’m no homewrecker. Let’s go. Roger may be in serious peril.”
We crossed to opposite sides of the river. She was right—her side had a nice convenient riverbank, while mine was forest with a steep drop to the river. There was no trail and the vegetation was thick enough that it almost wasn’t worth Henrietta and I splitting up.
Also, there were places galore for snakes to hide. With each step I expected to hear a loud hiss and then feel a pair of fangs slam into my ankle.
We called out for Roger as we walked.
He wasn’t dead. I refused to believe that he was dead.
I’m not saying that I’m an optimistic guy by any stretch of the imagination—at least, I haven’t been in quite a while—but I genuinely believed that Roger was alive. Maybe he was lying on the riverbank with two shattered legs, but he was alive.
Henrietta was getting pretty far ahead of me. I couldn’t even see her anymore.
“Found him!” she called out.
I felt a renewed sense of energy, although my pace was still way too slow. Finally I saw both Henrietta and Roger. She was on her side of the river, and Roger was near my side, about ten feet from the edge, pinned on a tree branch, eyes closed, not moving.
Chapter Twelve
I made my way to the tree as quickly as possible. Because of the heavy current, Roger was jiggling around but he didn’t appear to be conscious.
“Hey, Roger!” I shouted.
He didn’t open his eyes.
Crawling out on top of the tree branch seemed like it would result in the branch snapping and both of us being carried off to our deaths. I’d have to get into the water and ease my way over to him, praying the entire time that he’d been knocked out instead of killed.
I climbed down the incline. I was no longer worried about piranha or similar aquatic dangers. I just needed to make it over to my best friend and bring him back safely.
Wait, was that a…?
I had to stare at it for a moment to confirm that, yes, there was a great big snake coiled on the branch between Roger and I. Its coloring wasn’t much different from the wood. I didn’t know why a frickin’ snake would want to be out on a tree limb that dangled over a river. Maybe it got an adrenaline rush from the feeling of danger. What I also did not know was what kind of snake it was. If it was another boa constrictor, hey, no problem. If it was a venomous rattlesnake, that could be an issue.
I couldn’t try to shake it off the branch, because that might dislodge Roger. And Henrietta was probably too far away to see what kind of snake it was. Our conversation would be the kind of comedy of errors that I didn’t have time for right now. I had no real choice but to hope that I made it to Roger and back without the snake deciding to do me harm.
I walked into the water, almost losing my balance in the current, and proceeded forward until my feet no longer touched the bottom. Fortunately, there were lots of smaller branches attached to the big branch, so my hands wouldn’t have to get too close to a potentially venomous snake as I made my way forward.
No problem at all. This was going fine. Better than expected, even.
I kept watching for something that might indicate Roger’s condition, but his eyes remained closed and his body kept moving around. As I moved directly underneath the snake, I tried to look for some kind of telltale markings that would tell me what kind of snake it was, at least until I remembered that I don’t know shit about snakes.
I passed completely underneath the snake without it trying to strangle or bite me. It didn’t even move. Maybe it was dead.
I was almost to Roger. Still no way to tell if he was breathing.
I froze as I thought I heard a branch crack. But the rapids were so loud that there was no way I’d actually be able to hear something like that, so it was just my imagination trying to make me even more tense than I already was. My imagination could suck it.
Just about there…
I made it. I could tell that he was wedged really tightly in between a couple of branches, but if I was able to wake him up, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to get him free, right?
“Hey, Roger?” I asked, prodding his shoulder. “Roger? Wake up for me, buddy.”
Roger gave no indication that he heard me.
I slapped him in the face. He didn’t wake up. I wouldn’t freak out about that yet. Both of his arms were submerged. I reached for one of them and pulled it out of the water, while maintaining my death-grip on the branch with my other hand, then placed my fingers against his wrist to check for a pulse.
Was it there? Was it not there? I couldn’t tell.
Even if he was dead, I wasn’t going to leave him out here, so I was going to assume that he was alive but that he wasn’t going to help me with the rescue effort.
I slapped him a couple more times just in case.
Dammit.
I tried to tug him free, but I’d been right, he was wedged in there really good. I could think of a lot of tools that would be really useful right now, but everything we’d brought was at the bottom of the river.
I tugged harder.
I couldn’t get any real leverage, so he almost definitely wasn’t going to come loose this way without his participation. I’d have to try to break the branches away. It wouldn’t be an impossible task, but it wouldn’t be easy. I’d probably have to use both hands, which would mean wrapping one arm around the larger branch while I worked.
I glanced over at H
enrietta. Instead of a thumbs-up gesture of moral support, she was frantically waving both hands over her head. When she saw that she’d caught my attention, she pointed, then pressed her hands together and moved them back and forth in a slithering motion.
I turned around in time to see the snake coming toward me, mouth open wide.
Without even thinking I grabbed it by the neck, yanked it as hard as I could, then tossed it into the river. The current carried the serpent away.
Please do not think less of me, but I’ll confess that in that moment, and only in that moment, I wished somebody had captured the event on video. Nobody would ever believe that I did that. This quick action and bravery sort of compensated for being so useless during the boa constrictor issue last night. Anyway, it was a brief flash of regret, and then I returned my attention to the problem at hand.
Okay, now I could at least work on getting Roger free without worrying about getting poisoned. In fact, as long as I made sure I didn’t give him the opportunity to pop free and get swept away, it might be better now to try to climb up on the tree limb.
I pulled myself up onto it and went to work trying to free Roger.
It took some effort, but I managed to break the branches off that were pinning him. Now all I had to do was pull him back to shore.
Roger opened his eyes. “Andrew…?”
This startled me so badly that I yelped and almost fell off the branch. I lost my grip on Roger and he got whisked away in the current.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
I dove into the water after him, by which I mean I awkwardly toppled into the river and tried to swim after my friend. Henrietta ran along the riverbank trying to get ahead of him, but the current was moving a lot faster than her legs were.
Then Roger grabbed another branch. I grabbed the same branch as I reached him.
“Thank God you’re alive!” I said.
Roger looked like he wanted to say something witty or heartfelt. Instead, he coughed up a bunch of water.
Our branch snapped, and we resumed being carried away in the current.
This brief intermission had given Henrietta a chance to get ahead of us and wade into the river. I tried to adjust my course to bring me toward her. I obviously had no say in where the river took me and it was silly to think otherwise, but fortunately the current brought me toward her anyway.