Fish looked back downstream. He judged he was about twenty feet from Bread’s dad, maybe sixty from the falls. He narrowed his eyes in the rain and jammed his pole against the river bottom. He felt it connect with the rocks and pushed the raft downriver with all his might. He lifted it and found bottom and pushed again, accelerating the raft toward the falls and Bread’s dad. He knew what lay ahead. It was death. The falls roared. The lightning crackled so brilliantly it illuminated the river bottom, the rocks and boulders, the clinging crayfish. Fish saw clearly. This act, he knew, would release him. He promised he’d get to Bread’s dad, and he would. Bread would keep swimming and live on, knowing he tried to save his father, knowing he was good even if his father was not. And Fish would go over the falls, having kept a promise, having offered life to his friend with his own. Fish was not a poor damned thing. Bread was not a poor damned thing. They were not forsaken. Fish gave himself over to it, the abandon of it. There was nothing left to fear. Fish pushed even harder against the river stones.
The man’s boots rose to the surface, kicked, then disappeared again. He faced the falls, backpaddling, panicked, his left arm a tangle of rope. Fish was ten feet away from him, the falls thirty. The depth of the canyon gaped before them. The river rose and fell through glass black waves.
Fish repositioned his pole. The pole found bottom. Lightning illuminated stones. Fish yelled for Bread’s dad to turn around, leaned into the pole with his full weight, then leapt toward the front of the deck. Fish landed hard on his stomach and reached out into the water. Bread’s dad turned upriver, went underwater, lifted his hands. Fish grasped his wrists, and the man grasped his.
Fish had him.
The man’s face emerged in the darkness. The water had washed the bandage free, and the bloody gauze hung loosely across his nose and mouth. The uncovered eye was blood red, cut through with river channels and lightning bolts. And just where the crease of his eye met his temple, the stitched and bleeding track of a wound ran back toward a torn ear. The cut followed the arc of his skull, a vein pounding next to the wound. The bullet had only grazed him, Fish knew, and with it knew he never was a killer.
Five feet from the lip of Ironsford Gorge, the weight of the man dangling from the raft spun it just enough for Fish to glance upstream. Equidistant from the falls and the rock—ten feet from death and ten feet from life—Bread’s body still sliced across the surface like a streak of light. He kicked and reached. Kicked and reached. As Fish watched Bread’s hand plant itself firmly on solid rock, he felt the raft roll to his left. It spun. Its bow faced upstream and then pitched up toward the thunderclouds.
The last thing Fish saw before blackness was a blue and slate thundercloud shaped like a beautiful mountain, a bolt ripping through it, and then Bread’s dad stretched prone, his poncho and boots waving skyward, his arms clasped to Fish’s arms, that dreadful eye wild and startled, flying like a beautiful bird.
Seventeen
TIFFANY HURLED HER PADDLE INTO THE DARKNESS. “THERE!” SHE said, folding her arms before the paddle even hit the water. “Maybe that will make it easier for you.”
Cal’s jaw dropped as he watched the paddle dart off into the rain. Now what’s this about? Cal realized how little he knew this woman, how much of a stranger she was. It was an odd realization. During the countless hours of sitting horseback and staring at stars and wading through brambles, he’d imagined himself married to her, and all the way through their honeymoon, their first house with a dock, their third or fourth child. But now he remembered he hadn’t so much as asked her on a date. He only knew where she lived and worked because he was a sheriff living in a very small town. And now she’d thrown one of their two paddles into the darkness.
“Tiffany—what on earth, woman!” He knew it was a mistake when it came out of his mouth.
“Woman? Woman!” she retorted, astonished. “I am not going to sit up here—man—and listen to you tell me how to paddle anymore.” She mocked his voice—Tiff, left side. No, right side. No, left. “I paddled this canoe through a tornado, Cal, and a rapids. Nearly eighty miles of river. And all of it went pretty smooth until you pretended to take over!”
Her tone was dark as river water. Cal reeled.
“Tiff, you never said you wanted to steer. And the person in the back does the steering. And I’m in the back.”
“I know who does the steering! And it sure isn’t you! Back and forth. Back and forth. I’ve never been so seasick.”
Cal paused, thought a moment. “What is wrong with you? Is this really about steering? You can steer, okay? You steer.”
“Oh, please,” she said, which made Cal drop his jaw at the night sky. He bit his knuckle.
It was raining hard again. Thunder rumbled around them. They’d made good distance, or at least Cal thought they’d made good distance. It was hard to tell. For the past half hour, Cal had been looking in earnest for the buoys and gorge. The river narrowed to one channel again, and the pines and cedars grew thick amid rock outcroppings. The lightning was such that finding the buoys should be easy enough, if they could focus for a moment. Why was Tiff like this? First the silence, then this anger, and for what? Cal was no boatman, but he knew his steering was not as bad as Tiffany claimed.
So he tried again. “No, really, you can steer. We’ll spin around. I’m glad to let you have the rudder.” Cal turned the canoe with a few drawstrokes, but Tiffany just sat in the bow with her arms crossed, facing upstream.
“I don’t have a paddle, Cal.”
“Well.” He paused, careful now of his next words. He was playing with fire here, and he knew it. “You can have mine.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? A woman paddling you around while you lounge in the bow and play captain. I watched your dog for you, Cal. How could you?”
Cal froze. He remembered once getting a call to a backyard in Houston where a pit bull was tangled in a neighbor’s garden hose. It snarled whenever he moved. He didn’t know how to approach it.
“How could I what?” he asked, in as monotone a voice as he could muster.
Tiffany growled and beat her fist on the gunwale. “You just paddle this canoe! Do you understand? Just get us downriver!”
Cal dipped his paddle experimentally in the water, turned the boat again. They floated around a left-hand bend where the river widened. Cal made out what looked to be a slough leading off to the left of a rocky peninsula, and a few rock outcroppings to the right. A vertical rock face rose from the peninsula and seemed to indicate the main channel. He applied enough pressure to the paddle to nose toward it. No island yet. No buoys. He was tired of this river, this rain. He wanted his warm truck and his dog and a cup of coffee. Maybe a stiff drink. He shook his head at the thought. No drink. That’s going away, along with this badge. And as long as he was shedding old comforts, he decided his daydreams about Tiffany might as well go too. She wasn’t for him. He wasn’t for her. No use pretending anymore.
“We’d go faster if we had two paddles,” he said.
Tiffany spun in her seat and nearly capsized the canoe. She stared him down in the lightning flashes. She was so beautiful, so exasperating.
“Don’t you mock me, Sheriff. Don’t you dare mock me!”
“I’m not mocking you. I just don’t understand why you tossed your paddle. I wasn’t bossing you.”
“Bossing me? Bossing me. Do you think I threw my paddle because you were bossing me, Sheriff?”
Cal let his eyes glare back. “That’s what you said!”
“I did not say that, and you know it, Sheriff.”
Thunder bellowed overhead.
“You said I was telling you how to paddle, and you were seasick, and then you whipped your paddle off into the night, Tiff. And I told you before to stop calling me Sheriff!”
“I said your steering made me seasick, not your bossing, Sheriff. There’s a difference.”
“What the hell are we even talking about?” Cal beat the gunwales with his paddle m
ore loudly than he hoped to. “And stop calling me Sheriff!”
The cliff face rose to their left, up to a high plateau covered in cedar. The current seemed to quicken.
“We are talking,” said Tiffany, “about you and your different life.” She lifted her hands from the gunwales and made air quotes with her fingers. Then she gripped the canoe and leaned forward. “And how stupid am I to get steered around by a man and babysit his dog and chase it through the wilderness while he dreams of going back to Houston or Dallas or from wherever else some syrupy blonde writes him letters?” Then her voice changed. The sarcasm left it. “Can you not see me sitting here, Cal? Can you not see me at all?”
“Who said anything about Houston or another woman?” The words she just spoke, the way she spoke them, seemed to push aside the rain and thunder. A fresh wind of realization, pure and light, rose in Cal’s heart. She was yelling at him because she was jealous. Cal felt a dumb grin spread on his face.
“Don’t smile at me, Cal. I can’t bear it.”
“No,” Cal said, softly now. “You don’t understand, Tiff. I thought you were mad at me.”
“I am mad at you!”
“Well, I know, but for the wrong reason. Listen, Tiff, when I was talking about wanting a new life, I wasn’t talking about leaving here.”
Tiffany sat very still. She inclined her head, as if waiting for the rest of his thought, and then she followed Cal’s gaze.
Cal had stopped paddling. He’d seen something onshore.
“Tiff, are those buoys?”
Lightning crackled and illuminated the right shoreline. The canoe seemed to be drifting beside a string of large floating orbs, like calf tanks, Cal thought, but red. Cal had envisioned arriving perpendicular to the line of buoys, not alongside it. Lightning flashed again, and the line of buoys arced out into the center of the river, where they seemed to attach themselves to a rock outcropping. To the outcropping’s left, where the canoe was headed, lay the channel, and beyond the channel rose the high rock face of the peninsula.
“That’s the island?” asked Cal, nodding toward the small outcropping. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He didn’t like the thought of being confused by buoys that were supposed to warn him of a killer waterfall. He began looking around for the boys and their raft.
“Cal!” Tiffany pointed toward the far left shore. A post emerged from the shallows, with a slack cable dragging a single buoy that bumped against the rocks. Cal looked back at the rock outcropping, where the line of buoys now clearly clung, snagged because the rope was cut. He started backpaddling furiously.
“Cal?”
“That outcropping is not the island,” he said, nodding at the rock, now twenty yards downstream to their right. “That’s the island!” he said, jerking his head toward the cliff face. Directly ahead of them, the horizon of the falls became clear. Cal could hear the rumble of it now and cursed himself for missing it. He leaned into his paddle strokes. It was too late to make it to the main island, or the mainland. It was either make the outcropping or go over the falls.
Tiffany didn’t need prompting. She knelt in the bottom of the canoe, faced upstream, and dug the water with both hands. It was too late to try to turn the canoe. Their only hope of making the rock was to beat upstream at an angle, try to ferry over to the rock.
Cal pushed and pushed, leaned and sat up, felt his blade thrum with each stroke. They were ten yards off the falls now, and the river thundered more loudly than the sky. The gorge boomed and hummed. This was no small hole in the river.
“Keep paddling!” Cal yelled. He glanced at Tiffany. She wasn’t looking back at the falls. She was all in, digging forward, upstream, for her life.
“Keep paddling!” Cal yelled again, if only to himself. In a moment he’d be able to reach out and touch the outcropping with his paddle. They were that close. He focused on a few more strokes. He pushed down. He sat up. He wrenched the water. He spotted a handhold, a crack in the rock. He dropped his paddle and slapped both hands against the wet rock, curling his fingers into the fissure. Knees hooked inside the stern of the canoe, he felt the force of the river stretch his arms and back. The bow, with Tiffany, pointed itself toward the lip of the falls. The canoe banged against the rock, Cal’s body its only tether. Beneath his armpit, Cal could see Tiffany grasping the gunwales, reaching out toward the rock, jounced by the current.
“Jump!” Cal shouted. The force of the water wracked his joints. His shoulders and torso burned. “Jump now!” he screamed in desperation. He felt his strength fading fast.
The canoe swayed out from the rock when she leapt. The canoe felt lighter, and the current swung its empty hull back into the rock again. Cal looked down to see the empty bow dangling over the void. A sickening feeling came. He couldn’t see her. His own grip was about to fail. He was about to call out when he saw movement, a white and green running shoe scratching its way up to safety. I am going up, he thought. One chance.
Cal dug his fingers into the fissure as deeply as he could. He let his knees unfold, and as soon as he did, the canoe shot out from beneath him, leaving his legs skimming on the black water. Cal was startled by how quickly the canoe rocketed into oblivion. Now he dangled in that same thrum of current, trying to pull himself up onto the rock. He tucked his knees. His hard boot slipped against the wall. His legs plunged back into the current, and he thought for an instant that he’d lose his grip. Pain seared his shoulders. He looked at his hands. He looked at the falls. He had only a few seconds more, he knew, and then he’d have to let go. He lifted his socked foot this time. It gained purchase, enough to help him cling a moment longer.
He rested his forehead against the rock, bellowed for help, lifted his knees a final time, and then felt hands on his wrists. And he felt himself being slowly hoisted, like a wet rag, higher up the flat of the rock. He dug the toe of his boot and his knees into the rock, to give any boost he could, but he knew he was mostly dead weight. He heard Tiffany scream with effort, and felt his chest lifted up near the flat surface of the rock, and then saw something that confused him: Tiffany’s hands wrapped around his right wrist—both of them. On his left wrist, a slightly smaller set of hands clamped firm.
One more pull and Cal was up on the rock, flattened and spent. Rain pelted the side of his face. In his immediate field of vision, he saw Tiffany, legs folded, her palms flat on the wet rock, too winded to speak. To her left knelt a boy in a wet flannel shirt, looking at Cal with astonished eyes.
“Dale Breadwin,” panted the sheriff. He rolled painfully to his side and placed a heavy hand on the boy’s knee, patted it. “You okay?” he asked.
The boy nodded, and Cal tried to smile at him.
“Your bud here?”
The boy shook his head, and Cal frowned, looked at the rock. The scene took no great sheriff to discern. Two boys on a raft. One boy left on a rock near a falls. Cal felt exhaustion take his body, his mind too. There was nothing to say. Nothing could be done. It was over. Cal felt a knot rise in his throat. He rolled onto his back and hid his eyes with his forearm. He found Tiffany’s lap with his free hand, began to quietly weep. He wept for the past few days of briars and rivers and horses. He wept for the sight of that boy Fischer, and Dale, pushing off with that raft, how he’d seen that boy’s eyes. He wept for Houston and all its wasted time and hope. Tiffany took his hand and held on to it. Her fingers were soft and cold. Cal let out a slow, shuddering breath, let his head rest on that humming rock, and fell asleep in the roar and rain.
FISH RESTED HIS FOREHEAD ON THE BACK OF HIS HAND, UNABLE TO lift himself. He threw up river water. The air burned in his lungs. He didn’t know how long he’d been here, or how he got here from the bottom of that river, or where here even was. His heart banged in his chest and neck. He couldn’t tell what was hurt. He was just throb and puddle and fire. He tried to lift his head again, but it was still too heavy.
When he first hit the base of the falls, he thought he had died, so absolute was the dark
ness and weightlessness and breathlessness. His limbs freewheeled. His body spun through the hiss, pricked full of holes like the universe itself. Dying felt like the cosmos, some part of him thought, the cosmos at the beginning of things, only darkness and light and water. It wasn’t until Fish hit the river bottom, hit it hard on his right hip, that he remembered he was underwater, that he’d gone over the falls, and that he wanted to live. He tried to swim, but his arms and legs seemed wrenched in every direction. He opened his eyes, but there was no light. He opened his mouth to scream, but it filled with water. The desire to inhale was terrifying. Fish fought it and fought it, tumbled on in the gravel and stones. And just when he thought he could fight no longer, when his lungs seemed physically unable to remain so empty, he felt himself borne by a strange and powerful current. It boiled up from beneath him and lifted him like a leaf in a gust of wind. Fish bent and spun upward through the water column. He saw flashing lights, dappled and amber-colored. He saw froth and foam. Then he felt air rush in, heard his own breath as the river surged and spat him onto a smooth stone surface.
Fish found himself lying flat on his stomach, above water, hugging the flat curve of a massive stone rising from the river. Stunned and panicked, Fish dragged himself along the stone, scraping his nails against the marbled surface, his knees and toes propelling him forward. A few yards onto the stone, he looked back and saw a giant pillow of whitewater churning near the rock face like a fountain, a miraculous spring.
Fish waited for his heart to slow. He could still feel its pulse knocking in the back of his throat. He moved his arms and legs experimentally, flexed his fingers. They worked. He drew another rattling breath. How long had he been under? He had no way of knowing. He rolled on his side and looked up at the sky. Lightning shot through it, slowly somehow, and Fish felt as if he could see individual raindrops spinning and throbbing as they fell, blackened and jeweled in so much light and darkness.
Raft of Stars Page 25