Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

She stopped paddling. “I’m going to be sick again.”

Ace beat the water with his oar, sending spray across her already soaked clothes. “All right, goddamn it, just quit your bitching for a minute.”

He guided the canoe to the shore and the thunder swelled in intensity. Ace, watching for rocks off the bow, didn’t see it looming downstream, but Clara already had her paddle in the water, noticing the current had picked up steam.

“Waterfall!” she screamed.

Ace didn’t hear her, or didn’t understand her, because he still wore the pissed-off scowl. Clara leaned forward and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Look!”

Ace muttered something that probably was “Shit fire,” one of his favorite expressions, but the words were lost amid his flailing maneuvers with the paddle. The canoe spun until they were heading downstream sideways. The smooth lip of the waterfall loomed ahead, the river channeling to a spout about fifty feet in width. Clara couldn’t tell the height of the falls, but judging from the bit of rocky river she could see downstream, the drop seemed plenty long enough to smash them and the canoe to pieces and put paid to Ace’s holy work.

Calm descended upon her, though she was aware that her arms now worked in frantic rhythm with Ace’s, dipping into the water and shoving the canoe toward shore. She had no death wish after all, she discovered, at least not here in this cold and lost river with a cold and lost man. Sure, she loved the danger and the thrills, but she didn’t like the ending. It was pain that attracted her, not the absence of feeling.

“Fuck it,” Ace shouted, letting his oar slide into the water. He stood, grabbed his backpack from the middle of the canoe where it lay in a thin skin of water, and jumped overboard. Clara watched, giving three more useless strokes before she realized Ace had actually abandoned her.

The bastard.

It should have deserved an exclamation point, but Ace had been a bastard for at least two weeks.

With time off for good behavior.

No surprises anymore, just another man grabbing in desperation. No higher power, no real threat where it mattered, nothing to offer except a strange, glowing thing deep inside her stomach, a thing that made her both sick and suspicious.

Ace bobbed off the stern, five feet nearer to shore than the canoe. He stroked with one arm, trailing the buoyant backpack behind him. Not looking back. Leaving Clara and the thing inside

— behind.

Ace didn’t understand trailer trash summers, where kids jumped off the bridge into water that had collected the raw sewage runoff and livestock spills and cast a greasy rainbow stain in the current. Clara could swim. She was a survivor, at least so far.

She rolled out of the canoe, kicking it away from her, recalling some distant lesson in science about bodies in motion. Bodies in motion didn’t mean molecules and atoms and quarks and stuff you couldn’t see. It meant moving, staying alive, dodging the worst. Getting by.

She gulped cool air and her face hit cooler water; she raised her arms in a butterfly stroke and plunged, awake, belly tingling, nipples tightening, toes wriggling around the thong of her sandals.

Her hand slid across a rock, skinning her knuckles, then her feet hit bottom. She skated on the algae-slick stones for a moment and gained purchase on a sandy shoal. Wading ashore, she realized she had beaten Ace to high ground. He crawled out of the water, spitting and wheezing, the backpack hooked around his elbow, his camou trousers soaked.

“We made it,” Clara said.

Ace pounded the backpack into the shallow water, splashing both their faces. “What you trying to do, kill me?”

“I’m trying to save us. All of us.”

“That’s the Lord’s job.”

Clara was so tired, she just wanted to lie in the sand and take a nap. But the sun had gone cold, hidden behind clouds that resembled a flock of dirty sheep. She wrapped her arms across her chest, shivering. “What now?”

Ace, knee-deep in the current, watched as the canoe swept over the edge of the world and into the thundering spray far below.

“Wait for the next ride,” he said, and Clara decided that was the story of her life.

Jim Castle walked a quarter of a mile along the riverbank, occasionally getting his feet wet, sometimes climbing along the mossy and root-rich lips of soil where the river had carved its path. The Rook hadn’t invaded his thoughts since he’d encountered the couple on the shore, and Castle believed himself cured of whatever temporary syndrome had afflicted him.

You mean, “ Short-term post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The Rook was back and better than ever.

“No, I mean, I can’t decide whether you’re dead or I’m crazy.”

Go for both. It’s the most reasonable explanation.

“Since when have you ever been reasonable?”

Look, you’re the one thinking all this up.

“Except you make me think things I don’t understand.”

Join the club. It’s a big one, and at last count included six and a half billion other bald monkeys. Plus those things. You know…

“Flying, man-eating creatures that don’t exist. Yeah, I know.”

Castle concentrated on his respiration, the roar in his ears mirroring the rush of white water. Sympatico with the river, both of them heading downhill toward the lowest common denominator, the final crush of time and tide.

Deeeeeep, partner. Like the river. Extended metaphors. Not the kind of thing you expect from a crew-cut type.

“Don’t look now, but we’ve got company.”

Company?

Maybe when you were dead, or just the figment of some cracked cop’s imagination, you couldn’t see the two inflated rafts bobbing on the river, rows of white helmets glinting in the afternoon light. They bounced over a series of whitecaps and reached an eddy that pulled both rafts in a slow circle. There were three people in each raft, all wearing life vests. One, a muscular man in a tank top with dark, curly hair, shook a triumphant fist at Castle, who waved back. He fought an urge to lift one thumb in the universal sign of the hitchhiker.

Instead, Castle waved his badge and gun. The nearest raft headed toward shore, two of the occupants paddling while the one in front slumped as if deciding whether to make a dash downstream, away from the threat of the gun. As if Castle would actually use the weapon, as if they could outrun his bullets if he did.

“Hey,” Castle shouted, as the raft scooted ashore and grounded on the muddy, debris-wracked shore. The man in the middle looked pale and ill, eyes focused miles downstream. The man in front, in some type of wet suit, appeared to be the leader. At least, he stuck his chin out in a defiant gesture.

Castle felt stupid holding the badge out for the man’s inspection. Protocol was protocol, though.

By the book, right, partner? Straight down the line, all the way.

“All the way?” Castle answered aloud.

“What did you say?” the man in the raft said.

“Nothing.”

Tell them it’s the only way to fly.

“It’s the only way to fly,” Castle said.

The three men in the raft stared at him as if he’d just dropped from the sky.

Expect the unexpected.

ProVentures had adopted the oxymoronic cliche as a slogan for its line of climbing gear. Bowie Whitlock had to admit the phrase was perfectly crafted to catch the attention of hurried, harried Earth children and the overachieving stoners who were the biggest consumers of outdoor adventure equipment. But the phrase was just as appropriate to being flagged down by a man waving a badge and a gun, as if the rafts had broken the speed limit and the man was playing backwoods traffic cop.