Margaret Atwood - Surfacing

"Don't bother him," Anna said.

"Or maybe I'll make it a short course this time," David said. "For the businessmen how to open the Playboy centrefold with the left hand only, keeping the right free for action, for the housewives how to switch on the T.V. and switch off their heads, that's all they need to know, then we can go home."

But he wouldn't, he needed to be rescued himself and neither of us would put on the cape and boots and the thunderbolt sweatshirt, we were both afraid of failure; we lay with our backs to each other, pretending to sleep, while Anna prayed to nobody through the plywood wall. Romance comic books, on the cover always a pink face oozing tears like a melting popsicle; men's magazines were about pleasure, cars and women, the skins bald as inner tubes. In a way it was a relief, to be exempt from feeling.

"The trouble with you is you hate women," Anna said savagely; she threw the rest of her tea and the tealeaves out of her tin cup into the lake, they hit with a splat.

David grinned. "That's what they call a delayed reaction," he said. "Goose Anna in the bum and three days later she squeals. Cheer up, you're so cute when you're mad." He crawled over to her on all fours and rubbed his bristly burdock chin against her face and asked her how she would like to be raped by a porcupine. "You know that one?" he said. "How do porcupines do it? Carefully!" Anna smiled at him as though he was a brain-damaged child.

The next minute he had scrambled up and was capering on the point, shaking his clenched fist and yelling "Pigs! Pigs!" as loud as he could. It was some Americans, going past on their way to the village, their boat sloshing up and down in the waves, spray pluming, flags cocked fore and aft. They couldn't hear him because of the wind and the motor, they thought he was greeting, they waved and smiled.

I washed the dishes and soaked the fireplace, the hot stones sizzling, and we packed and started again. It was rougher, there were whitecaps on the open lake, the canoe rolled under us, we had to fight to keep it from turning broadside on; foam trailed on the dark water, spent waves. Paddle digging the lake, ears filled with moving air; breath and sweat, muscle hurt, my body at any rate was alive.

The wind was too strong, we had to change course; we headed across to the lee shore and followed it, as close to the land as possible, threading the maze of rocks and shallows. It was the long way around but the trees sheltered us.

Finally we reached the narrow bay where the portage was; the sun was at four, we'd been delayed by the wind. I hoped I would be able to find the place, the beginning of the path; I knew it was on the opposite side. As we rounded the point I heard a sound, human sound. At first it was like an outboard starting; then it was a snarl. Chainsaw, I could see them now, two men in yellow helmets. They'd left a trail, trees felled at intervals into the bay, trunks cut cleanly as though by a knife.

Surveyors, the paper company or the government, the power company. If it was the power company I knew what it meant: they were going to raise the lake level as they had sixty years ago, they were plotting the new shoreline. Twenty feet up again and this time they wouldn't cut off the trees as they had before, it would cost too much, they would be left to rot. The garden would go but the cabin would survive; the hill would become an eroding sand island surrounded by dead trees.

As we went by they glanced up at us, then turned back to their work, indifferent. Advance men, agents. Swish and crackle as the tree tottered, whump and splash as it hit. Near them was a post driven into the ground, numbers on it in fresh red paint. The lake didn't matter to them, only the system: it would be a reservoir. During the war. I would be able to do nothing, I didn't live there.

The landing place at the portage was clogged with driftwood, sodden and moss-grown. We pushed in among the slippery logs as far as we could, then clambered out and waded, dragging the canoes up over, soaking our shoes. It was bad for the canoes, it scraped the keels. There were other paint marks, recent.

We unloaded the canoes and I knotted the paddles into position across the thwarts. They said they would take the tents and the canoes and Anna and I could take the packs and the leftovers, the fishing rods and the tackle box with the jar of frogs I'd caught that morning, the movie equipment. David had insisted on it, though I warned him we might tip.

"We have to use up the film," he said, "we've only got it rented for another week."

Anna said "But there won't be anything you want," and David said "How do you know what I want?"

"There's an Indian rock painting," I said, "prehistoric. You might take that." A point of interest, it would go with the Bottle Villa and the stuffed moose family, a new anomaly for their collection.

"Wow," David said, "Is there? Neat," and Anna said "For god's sake don't encourage him."

Neither of them had portaged before; we had to help them lift and balance the canoes. I said maybe they should double up, both of them under one canoe, but David insisted they could do it the real way. I said they should be careful; if the canoe slipped sideways and you didn't get out in time it would break your neck. "What's the matter," he said, "don't you trust us?"

The trail hadn't been brushed out recently but there were deep footprints, bootprints, in the muddy places. Two sets, they pointed in but not out: whoever they were, Americans maybe, spies, they were still in there.

The packs were heavy, food for three days in case the weather turned bad and marooned us; the straps cut into my shoulders, I leaned forward against the weight, feet squishing in the wet shoes as I walked.

The portage was up over a steep ridge of rock, watershed, then down through ferns and saplings to an oblong pond, a shallow mudhole we'd have to paddle across to reach the second portage. Anna and I got there first and set down the packs; Anna had time to smoke half a cigarette before David and Joe came staggering down the trail, bumping into the sides like blinkered horses. We held the canoes and they crouched out from under, they were pink and breathless.

"Better be fish in there," David said, sleeving off his forehead.

"The next one's shorter," I told them.

The water was covered with lily pads, the globular yellow lilies with their thick centre snouts pushing up from among them. It swarmed with leeches, I could see them undulating sluggishly under the brown surface. When the paddles hit bottom on the way across, gas bubbles from decomposing vegetation rose and burst with a stench of rotten eggs or farts. The air fogged with mosquitoes.

We reached the second portage, marked by a trapper's blaze weathered to the colour of the tree. I got out and stood holding the canoe steady while Joe climbed forward.

It was behind me, I smelled it before I saw it; then I heard the flies. The smell was like decaying fish. I turned around and it was hanging upside down by a thin blue nylon rope tied round its feet and looped over a tree branch, its wings fallen open. It looked at me with its mashed eye.

"Heavy," David said. "What is it?"

"A dead bird," Anna said. She held her nose with two fingers.

I said "It's a heron. You can't eat them." I couldn't tell how it had been done, bullet, smashed with a stone, hit with a stick. This would be a good place for herons, they would come to fish in the shallow water, standing on one leg and striking with the long spear bill. They must have got it before it had time to rise.

"We need that," David said, "we can put it next to the fish guts."

"Shit," Joe said, "it really stinks."

"That won't show in the movie," David said, "you can stand it for five minutes, it looks so great, you have to admit." They began to set up the camera; Anna and I waited, sitting on the packs.