Питер Геллер - The River

“Not French,” said the man.

Wynn stared at his buddy. The man needed aid and succor—why was he being a hardass?

“Tell us,” Jack said.

The man seemed to draw back. He was looking at them as if they had just asked for his wallet. In unison, out of some unspoken courtesy, they both took a step backward. Pierre kept his hand on the strap of the gun and blew out a long breath. “We were camped,” he said. “On the east shore. Not sure—a few miles down the lake. It got cold. And then late the fog came in. We’d never seen that. Before all the wind.” He began talking fast, in some kind of panic. “She said she had to go, you know—”

“We know,” Jack said, and Wynn glanced at him, puzzled. He was never this impatient.

The man sucked at the water bottle. He wiped his eyes with his forearm. “She unzipped the tent and went out into the fog and I never saw her again.”

Wynn started forward. “What?” he said.

“I never saw her again. There was a berm behind the camp. I figured she went behind it. She took a flashlight. I found the light but I never saw her. I looked for hours, calling and calling, but it was useless in the dark.” His words ran fast, then jumbled into each other.

“And?” Jack said.

“I searched all day today and nothing.” His head hung and he looked at his feet and his mouth began to quiver.

“Jesus,” Wynn said. “Were there any tracks? Any sign?”

The man hung his head and shook it.

“No sign of a bear? There are plenty of black bear.”

The man shook his head. “There was another canoe,” he said. “Two men. We kept seeing them at a distance. I don’t know…”

“Yeah, we met them,” Wynn said. “The two drunks. They were kind of creepy.”

Jack was watching the man. He pushed his cap back and rubbed his forehead. He was trying to make sense of it. He said, “The night the fog came in. You mean the night before the morning of the fog or the night after?”

The man’s head came up. Tears streamed on his sunburned cheeks and dripped off his lightly bearded chin. They fell to the dark stones and blackened them with drops like rain.

“What does it matter?” Wynn said.

“I can’t think,” the man said. “She’s gone. Maia’s gone! ” It was almost a howl, of rage and grief. It rose over the rush of the falls and echoed off the wall of trees. It did not have the pure longing of a loon but it was just as loud.

Wynn put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Just sit for a second—we’ve gotta think.”

“There’s nothing to think about,” the man shot back. He wiped his face on his sleeve. “We’ve got to get to the village.”

“Do you have a satellite phone?” Wynn said.

“No.”

“Were you two gonna get picked up on the lake?”

“No.”

“You were planning to paddle down to Wapahk?”

“Yes.”

“So no one’s coming?”

“No.”

“Even if we sprinted to the village—that’d take ten days. At least.”

The man’s eyes glassed over again. It looked like he was drifting back into shock. Wynn breathed and tamped down a rising desperation. He turned to Jack. Jack was watching the man, puzzled. Wynn shivered.

“We’re gonna go look,” Wynn whispered. Not soft enough that the man didn’t hear, and Pierre started forward as if burned.

“What?” he said.

“Jack and I are going to portage back to the lake and go look for her. The currrent’s too strong to paddle back up, so we’ll carry the canoe.”

“We are?” Jack said. He looked at his buddy with a burnished admiration.

Wynn straightened. “If we don’t, who else will?”

“Hell yeah,” Jack said. He pulled down his cap brim. “That’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”

“You can’t do that,” the man said. “It’s up stream. Probably a couple of miles. There’s no trail. ”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “We’re young and strong.” He said it like a warning.

Jack held his arm straight out and lifted it to the partially obscured sun. He cupped his hand and counted down hand’s-widths to the treetops across the river. Each finger was fifteen minutes, the hand held out without the thumb an hour. His father had taught it to him. “We’ve got over four hours of daylight,” he said. The man stared at him.

“What does she look like?” Jack said.

The man blinked. He couldn’t digest what was going on. He said, “Look like? She’s—I don’t know. My height. Long brown hair. Greenish eyes. I mean, Christ, if there’s a woman alone—”

“Hold on,” Jack said. “Stay put.” He glanced at Wynn. “Can you keep him company?” He trotted down the trail toward the cabin. When he came back five minutes later he was carrying their fleece sweaters and raincoats, the day pack with survival gear, and a half-full dry bag with shoulder straps. Also their life vests, along with the spare. Slung over his shoulder was the Savage .308.

“Bring the fishing rods and your water bottle,” Jack said to Wynn.

“The rods? Are we gonna fish?”

Jack shot a look at his friend. “What if we get caught out?”

“Okay,” Wynn said. “Good thinking.” He went to the canoe and lifted out the rods. Jack began stuffing the dry pack with the survival box and the extra clothes, the spare life vest. He rolled the seal top and clipped it. “You take this,” he said to Wynn and handed him the pack. “I’ll take the canoe first.”

Wynn had seen his buddy go into command mode a few times, but it had always been in an emergency—when one of their NOLS teams was caught in a lightning storm on a ridge above treeline; when late-winter weather had blown in on the Dolores and a raft had flipped just before dusk. Was this an emergency? Definitely. The man had lost his wife. So if Jack seemed brusque, there was a reason.

The man, Pierre, was watching them. It was as if he couldn’t keep up with everything that was happening. Wynn supposed he was in shock. The man pushed himself up off the rock ledge. “Hey,” he said. He winced as he weighted his right leg. “You better take this.” He limped to his boat and opened a small clear waterproof bag clipped to a thwart. He pulled out a walkie-talkie handset. It was a Midland 36-Mile with a camo pattern. Jack recognized it; it was the same model he and his dad used at home, riding and hunting. In rough country it didn’t go thirty-six miles but it was usually good for fifteen. The man handed it to Wynn. He said, “Maybe you could…tell me…” Wynn grimaced. It looked like the man would break down again. But he didn’t. “Maybe you could keep me posted,” he said. “It should have a full charge.”

“Yeah, sure.” Wynn clipped the handset to his belt. He hoisted the dry pack, picked up the fishing rods. Jack was clipping their life vests around the two seats. As long as there was one on each end they wouldn’t unbalance the canoe. He put his arms through the extra one for padding. Jack squatted and lifted and heaved the upturned canoe onto his shoulders. Piece of cake. The nineteen-footer was made of ultralight Kevlar and weighed forty-seven pounds. He could carry it all day. He nodded at Wynn, Let’s go, and didn’t look back at the man but began walking easily to the top of the beach.

They moved fast at the beginning. The going was easier than they’d thought. Jack had remembered to snap the map case to the bow and he had double-checked the distance: just over a mile and a half. Nothing on the topo but the hump of the moraine. They pushed themselves.

At the speed they were walking they could get to the lake in less than an hour. It was easy going at first, open under the mixed woods along the shore, the underbrush light in the shade of the old trees, only a few spots where Jack had to drop the canoe and drag it through a thicket of willows or spruce limbs. He got scratched up, but who cared. Where they could, they swung out into the open along the riverbank. The willows and alders were denser here, but Jack thought how it was the same as the creeks back home: the animals clearly preferred the river’s edge. A good game trail cut through most of it. They saw bear scat crumbled with the seeds of berries, and moose tracks bedded into the deeper moss. The pack was heavier than Wynn thought it should be, but compared to many packs he’d carried it was featherweight. Then they got to the tail of the moraine and they had to hump over it. It was steep and in places eroded to rock and Jack climbed slowly, swinging the bow between branches, threading trees, and stepping up hard to shove the upside-down boat through the limbs of the firs. Wynn could hear him breathing, but they didn’t speak. Wynn wondered if it was like this for the biggest moose every day, trying to maneuver the broad antlers through mixed timber. At the steepest spots he put a hand on the swinging stern and spotted it, helping guide and push the swaying boat where he could, but the third or fourth time it unbalanced Jack as he stepped up on a root and he cursed hard and almost toppled.