Jack heard and understood. It was time to save themselves. He saw his dad give one final heave as he stumbled past, and then saw him reach for the bowline of the canoe. Jack knew he would tie the bowline to whatever was close and hope for the best.
Pain shot through Jack’s arm as he slipped and stumbled. At the same time, he was aware of the crashing, raging flood of the Athabasca, now directly behind and following him. It was a mesmerizing sound that caused him to turn his head and look for its source, despite his better judgment. Yet, look he did. Just like he and Cyril had stared at the rising rushing water beyond the beaver dam they had destroyed.
The only sound that was louder was the sound of his dad once again yelling, “Move!” Except this time, it was tinged with the agony of pain.
And this time Jack did not obey.
Had he not turned to look, he might not have seen the canoe, one end of it already in water, and its bowline tangled. And all of it ensnaring his dad against the tree to which he was trying to tie it.
“Move!” Malcolm yelled again, fearing his son’s indecision. “move!”
And, even as he yelled it, the water was rising higher and, at the same time, moving the big canoe they had struggled with minutes before. But now that canoe was twisting and tightening the bowline, a rope that Malcolm had made sure was stout enough to hold a laden canoe in the currents of the Athabasca.
Jack took in all of that as he looked back. All of that and, for the first time, a look of fear that he’d never seen before on his father’s face. Those strong arms were now entangled in a rope that was even stronger than he was. A snare cinched by the tightening pressure of the river, forcing itself against the big canoe.
The snapping of a couple of small saplings jerked Jack into an awareness of his dad’s pain and peril. He could obey, turn, and scramble up the slope. But, in that same instant, he knew he would be forever left with the memory of that moment etched into his mind. Or he could do something, anything. Jack knew he had no choice.
Jack flung himself toward his dad and into the hissing, gurgling turmoil of the surging water, and reached for the only thing that might save them both. Close to Malcolm’s hands, now trapped and pinned to his side, was the knife he always carried with him.
The water was cold, but Jack did not feel it. The current was strong and rising, but he resisted it. His dad was yelling for him to save himself, but Jack knew he had already stopped listening to that voice. He was now obeying his own instincts. And he was using both arms to do it.
Water had engulfed them both when Jack suddenly felt the trap release.
Like mists swirling through the trees with the first winds of early morning, the water of the Athabasca was in the treetops where the canoe had been entangled, and from which it was now carried away like a piece of flotsam, when it, too, was released by Jack cutting through the tether of its bowline.
Both Malcolm and Jack burst to the surface of the water that had already risen above them. They gasped and tried to orient themselves, Malcolm still clinging to the tree to which he had tried to secure the big canoe. Jack, however, had no such anchor and was flailing away and trying to stay afloat and breathe. This was not like the ripples and currents in which he and Cyril had splashed in previous summers, when they were pretending they could swim.
Panicked, Jack flailed about, grasping at what he could. All the while yelling, “Dad!” and, at the same time, gasping for air. “Dad! dad!” Still yelling, as he finally managed to snag the branches of a relatively secure poplar. “Dad!”
16
Malcolm looked around, trying to clear his head, trying to breathe, trying to regain control of so many things. And through it all, he heard the painful cry of an ancient memory that had never released him—“Mal! Malcolm! Mal!”
But this time he was not in the mud of some far-off Belgian battlefield. This time the noise was not the distant roaring of cannons nor the nearby explosion of shells. This was the surging and tearing of the Athabasca River close to home. The only thing that was the same was the panicked cry for help, as he looked around for its source.
“I’m coming, boy! Hang on!” Even though Malcolm did not know to whom or to what he was responding, he kept hearing the cry, and he kept repeating, “Hang on! I’m coming!”
It must have seemed like a lifetime for both of them. Malcolm let the current bounce him along through the trees until he, too, grabbed the gnarled and twisted branches holding his boy.
“Hold on, boy! I’ll not let you go this time!”
They were at the crest of the flooding tide that had swept down the valley from somewhere above. A valley that could only hold so much in normal seasons. Now it filled the reserves of passageways and channels dug ages before. The surge had swept before it all the stuff that was not firmly rooted or held down. Stumps and trees, and anything that could be bounced and floated in its current, were being carried along for hundreds of miles or more, until stopped by some ledge or bar or other obstacle. In places, it resembled the windrows of some great bulldozer.
And through it all, above it all, as the water slowly receded, the morning wind began to blow, and the sunshine of another summer day climbed to its normal noontime height.
As the water receded and the crest continued to surge in its destructive course downstream, Jack and Malcolm found their footing on the slope of the ground beneath them. The poplar that had stopped them revealed itself to be an ancient, stubborn tree that had obviously gained its strength and weather-beaten shape from years of exposure to all the elements. Its profile seemed to hug, rather than grow out of, the slope of the riverbank that had directed the Athabasca’s course ages before.
“Jack?” It was a question as well as an expression of surprise. Malcolm’s feet had found their footing while one arm clung to the tree branches and the other supported the boy, his son. “Jack?” he asked again. He needed to hear the voice.
Jack coughed and spat. He looked around as if he were waking from a turbulent sleep. Then he grimaced. “My arm.”
Jack’s left arm above the elbow was wedged into the crook of the tree. Its hand gripped the branch above like a white claw. The birch-bark splint that had steadied and supported his arm was gone. Nothing about that arm looked right or normal.
“Dad, it hurts,” Jack said as he looked at it. Only the pain told him it was his own arm he was looking at.
“Lean on me. I’ll get you out of here.” Malcolm said it as if he’d rehearsed those words before. It was the next part of the plan, ordered from somewhere in the dimness of his struggling mind. A mind that told him to go down into the battlefield trenches for safety, while at the same time, it urged him to go up the slope and into the sunlight for the same reason. Then, still puzzled by it all, he said, “I’m glad I found you this time.”
As Jack reached out to steady himself, he noticed that his left arm was obviously still alive. “It’s bleeding,” he said, noticing the trickle of blood running down from his left hand, feeling its warmth, and then the familiar aching, throbbing from the bruising and the break. And maybe because of that he added, “It really hurts this time.”
Jack yelled out in pain, as Malcolm lifted his broken arm out of the crotch of the tree. He tried to be gentle and offer support. And, as he did so, he noticed the green of the poplar leaves rattling in the breeze above them. He also noticed that the boy he was helping was Jack, his son. This was not the urgency of battle, but the urgency of home.
At last, Malcolm said, “We’ll be all right. The flooding’s over. But we’ll have to get up out of this wet and mud. Can you walk?”
Jack nodded. He tested the ground and the slope of it with both feet, nodded again and said, “Yes, I think so.”
“We’ll go up to where the little canoe is. There’s no rush this time.” Malcolm led the way slowly, helping.
Jack started to follow but looked around for the big c
anoe, wondering if it might be stranded in the trees and visible. And, more importantly, still usable. He decided not to mention it or ask about it. He cradled his left arm and cautiously followed his dad up the slope. Blood was trickling down his suspended left arm and dropping off at the elbow.
17
The little canoe was as they had left it at the top of the ridge in a small clearing. It looked strangely out of place, being tied to a tree and all.
Malcolm pulled a blanket out of the canoe to drape over Jack. “Sit here in the sunshine,” he suggested. “I’ll get a fire started.”
Whatever the circumstances or the season, a fire was the central component of a campsite. It represented security. It meant that you were in control.
Jack shivered uncontrollably and his face was pallid. He was propped up against a tree, legs splayed out in front of him, head down. He was looking at his bleeding hand, trying to remember the details of how it had happened, when his dad offered him a small tin of the sweetened condensed milk. A couple of holes in the top let him suck at its contents.
When he’d built the fire, Malcolm came back and said, “Now let’s see that broken arm.” And as the bleeding became more noticeable, “How did you get that cut? It looks deep.”
“I couldn’t see underwater. I could only feel the rope wrapped around you and your arms,” Jack stuttered through chattering teeth. “It was so cold, I didn’t feel anything at the time.”
“Well, Jack, you got me free. Thanks.”
It was the first time in a long time that Jack had heard his dad use his name. It was probably a lot longer since he’d been thanked for anything.
“I think I dropped your knife,” Jack stuttered. “It was the only thing big enough and sharp enough.”
Malcolm had noticed and wondered about his big hunting knife. He nodded and said, “But we’re both all right. At least for now, anyway.”
The cut was between Jack’s thumb and forefinger. It was deep, but straight and clean. Malcolm cut a small square from a shirt tail with his pocketknife to keep it covered and closed.
“Hold that on the cut while I get that break looked after. And keep sipping that milk.”
It was more medical advice than Malcolm had given in a long time. Jack wondered about that, as he watched his dad stride off into the bush to look for some more birch bark for his broken arm. He carried the ax to do that job.
As he watched, Jack tried to remember about the canoe, the rope, and the power of the rising water. It came back like a dream in flashing bursts of light. The kind of dream from which you wake up in a tangle of blankets and quilts, wondering what happened.
In the same way, Malcolm remembered Jack fighting against that rope, struggling to free his arms and hands, groping for the only thing that would save them both—the keen and reliable steel of his hunting knife. It was like the stories Malcolm had heard long ago. Stories that were multiplied by the war in which he, like so many others, was trapped by the power of history. Stories they could share among themselves, but which they knew others would not understand or believe. The others had not been there.
Jack was sitting cross-legged by the fire when Malcolm returned with the coils of birch bark. He used some strips of blanket like before, and then wound the bark in place to immobilize the arm, and also cover the cut on his hand. As he worked, he noticed that Jack’s color seemed to be returning.
“You’re almost as good as you were,” Malcolm muttered by way of conversation, as he finished tying things securely. “Just a few more bruises on your arm to go along with that break.”
The sun, the fire, and their activity had dried them both. Jack felt like he had just wakened. He was stiff and sore, his head muddled with the confusion of trying to remember. He looked toward the slope and the river, now somewhere below. “That was bigger than any spring break-up, wasn’t it?” he said.
Malcolm knew what he was asking. “Spring break-ups just involve ice, and sometimes the river getting plugged with it. This was more than ice. Even ice from still high up in the mountains somewhere.”
Then, having said that and realizing its implications, he added, “This was something bigger, upstream somewhere. And we may not have been the only ones caught up in it.”
Jack understood and remembered the beaver dam of a few summers before. “You mean, this might have done something back at the house?”
“It depends on where the blockage happened. But no. Our house is up as high as we are here. Higher.”
“You mean Hinton? Or even Jasper? Or the railway bridges?”
Malcolm shook his head. Then he cut off any further conversation. “Maybe. No! We can’t speculate about things like that. We don’t know. And worrying won’t change things.”
Malcolm snarled in anger this time. Snarled at the uncontrollable possibilities, at the memories that were coming back. Snarled because, once again, he had not been able to control very much.
18
It was strangely silent in the little log house in the clearing, on the plateau above the Athabasca River, during the days of waiting and wondering. Both Cyril and Amelia knew that their mom was troubled by waiting. They did not know mothers did that when one of their children was away from them, or when they sensed that their family was being torn apart.
It was Cyril who mentioned one evening that the river below their place seemed to be smaller and narrower. He’d taken over Jack’s old lookout on the bluffs. He could see a long sweep of the river in both directions. And he could fly with the eagles that claimed this as their home and hunting area.
In the dark hours toward morning, Rose heard the river. It was like the rising roar of a spring break-up several times over. A roar of water breaking through the trees on either shore, and using all the debris that it had collected upstream as a battering ram to do it.
“Get up!” Rose yelled. “Amelia! Cyril! Get your things on! We’ve got to get out of here!”
In the vague darkness of early morning, the release and resurgence of the big river was amplified to a sustained and frightening roar. Rose knew they had to be free to run to higher ground if necessary. “Find your shoe-packs!” she yelled as she opened the door.
The noise was louder and more ominous once they were outside.
“It’s not another spring break-up, is it?” Cyril yelled. “That’s never happened before. Not this late.”
“No, but the river’s flooding for some reason,” Rose answered, while at the same time pulling both Cyril and Amelia toward her.
“Will it come up here, Momma?” Amelia asked. “Will we get wet?”
“No, no.” Rose hugged her little girl more tightly. “No, I don’t think so. We’re up too high. But, just in case, we’ll stay out here for the time being. We’ll know more when it becomes light enough to see.” Rose tried to sound reassuring, even though she wasn’t all that sure about what was happening. All she knew was that any sign of panic from her would not help her children through whatever might lie ahead.
There was nothing to see, but the sound of it all was enough for their imaginations to conjure up images of devastation. After all, there was the story of a flood somewhere in their readers. Or was it one that Rose had read from the Bible?
After a while, sensing that the level of the flooding, rampaging river below them was subsiding, Rose drew her children to sit with her on the small bench beside the door. None of them wanted to go inside.
Cyril kept looking to where he knew the sun would come up. He thought that he could already see the gray of dawn lightening the sky. “Can I go down and look as soon as the sun’s up?” he asked. Even though he knew all three of them would go to investigate, he wanted to assert himself as the man of the house. He also knew exactly where he would go to survey what the Athabasca had done and was probably continuing to do. What he didn’t say, and hardly dared to even think about, was that he knew Jack an
d his dad were downriver somewhere. And whatever the rivers did in one place would continue downstream. Rivers only moved in one direction.
Rose nodded and said, “Yes.” They all needed answers to whatever their minds were imagining.
The sun was up and starting to warm things when Cyril finally persuaded his mom it was time to see what the river had done, and what it might still be doing. His was the mind of boyish adventure. He could not understand that his mom might be more inclined to fear and apprehension.
“Come on, Mom,” Cyril urged. “I know a place where we can see things without having to go right down to the river.” He wanted to see as much as he could. Their trail would only get them to the river’s edge, wherever that might now be.
“Come on!” he repeated. “It’s not far.”
Even from a distance and through a screen of trees, they could all hear that the river was much higher and stronger than usual for this time of year.
Cyril scrambled ahead for the final fifty yards or so. He could not wait any longer. He knew his mom and Amelia would catch up. He had to be first, for reasons any boy would understand.
And, like any boy, Cyril was disappointed in what he finally saw. The river was not the noisy torrent he had imagined, churning and foaming through a restricting gorge. It didn’t look much different from the spring run-offs, or the higher waters that sometimes came after the heavier rains in the Athabasca watershed.
“It was just a lot of extra noise,” he said when the other two came up behind him.
Rose, however, pointed to the signs of how that noise had been made and how big the river had been. “There’s still a lot of debris floating in the river,” she said, pointing. “And look at the far bank. Look at where the trees are bent and broken. The river’s never been that high, not even when there were ice dams somewhere during spring break-up.”
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