Питер Геллер - The River

“It’s smoky,” she croaked. Jack and Wynn glanced at each other. Her eyes were open. The swelling along the blades of her cheek was almost gone. She looked…like a normal person—disarrayed, half the hair loosed from her braid, dark circles of deep fatigue under her eyes, but blinking and alert.

“Are you in pain?” Wynn said.

She shook her head. “A little.”

“Where?”

“Here.” She motioned to the side of her head where he had sewed the gash. “And here.” She touched her stomach.

“Sharp or dull?” He didn’t know why he asked her that. He wasn’t a doctor, what could he do with the information?

“Dull.” She touched her head. “Sharp.” She touched her stomach. Well, okay. Probably not an infection in the cut on her head—that would be sharp, wouldn’t it? And who knew what in her gut.

“Do you have to pee?”

“God, yes.”

They helped her stand. They held her while she stepped onto the rock. “I can walk,” she said. She took a couple of tentative steps, swayed, held out an arm and Wynn grabbed it. She breathed and tried again, asked to be released, and they watched her walk uncertainly to the trees. They stood there. Neither knew what to do now. Should they screw the tactical worries and make camp? Make a fire? So they could roast the little caribou calf and all sleep comfortably? Two in the tent and one by the fire? And pray that whatever was coming held off until daylight, until they could maybe paddle through it, paddle the whitewater? Or pray that the thing never came at all, that it somehow died out or turned south, that the hardest rain of the summer would sweep in tonight? Fat chance. It was coming.

She came back. Slowly, a little drunk with weakness, but she came.

“Okay?” Wynn said. He couldn’t hide his anxiety. “Thirsty?”

It took her a second to locate him. She was like a very old person, trying to keep all the parts together while she executed a simple task. Her eyes swept past him once and came back and settled on his face, like a frightened searchlight.

“Okay,” she said. “I have blood in my stool.” If they felt paralyzed standing there, her words did not help. Neither knew what to say. She sat down gingerly on a low ledge of the bedrock. She looked at the boys.

“I’m not dead,” she said. “I don’t think I am.”

Jack set his cap back and rubbed his eyes and cheeks with the back of his hand. “Well,” he said.

“We’re going to get you out and to a hospital,” Wynn said. It sounded lame. To him. Her lips quivered into a smile.

“Thank you,” she said. That was it. That was all she seemed able to muster. Given the last few days, it seemed like a lot. Jack went to the canoe and pulled out the water bottle, which was half full, and took it to her, and she drank gratefully, eyes closed. He squatted beside her and when she opened them she found his face and let her eyes rove over it. They were jade-green with flecks of gold—or Kevlar. What Jack thought. And he saw them darken exactly as if a cloud shadow had passed over. Or the shadow of a huge bird. “Where’s Pierre?” she said.

The question was flat but tinged with concern or fear. Jack was less startled by the question than by her composure.

“Downstream,” he said. Which was the simplest answer. She nodded, grimaced.

“Data,” she murmured.

“What?” Jack said.

“Does he have my data?”

Jack’s jaw may have dropped. Wynn hovered over them like La Tree and felt again like he was in a weird dream.

“Data?” Jack said.

She lifted her right hand in an attempt to wave it away. For a moment they all held still, as in some incredulous tableau. Jack said, “Did he do this to you?” It was the question he’d wanted to ask for three days and he wasn’t going to delay it while she lost consciousness again. He wanted Wynn to hear the answer.

Her brow furrowed. As if she were trying to remember. Really? Jack thought. Are you kidding? We’re not going to get a straight answer?

“We were arguing,” she said. “That morning with the thick fog and wind, I remember that.”

“Yeah?” Wynn said, eager, from somewhere above.

“I was really mad. He was going back on his promise. That it was my trip.” She looked from one to the other vaguely. Her voice was weak. Jack was afraid she would pass out. He put a hand on her good shoulder.

“Okay, your trip. What do you mean?”

“My study,” she said. The words were faint. Uh-oh. But she was just straining to remember. It looked like it was causing her physical pain. “He would be my research assistant this time and it was my study.”

“Okaaay,” Jack said. “And?”

“And I was so mad. Wouldn’t you be?” Jack felt lost at sea. He saw tears trickle from the corners of her eyes. At least she was cogent. Remarkably. She was like one of those coma patients you read about who wake up after months and start talking about their vacation plans.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Then what?”

“I turned around and walked away. Fuck him, right?”

“Right. Fuck him.”

“And he grabbed my arm really hard and spun me back.”

Okay, the dislocation. They were getting somewhere.

“It was violent. It really hurt. I think he dislocated my shoulder.”

“He did,” Wynn said. She looked up at him as if seeing him for the first time.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes.” As if she’d forgotten what she was agreeing to.

“That’s why it’s in a sling,” Wynn suggested gently. “Jack popped it back in.”

“Oh, thanks.” She looked down at her arm in the sling. Almost as if it didn’t belong to her but to someone else.

“Then what?” Jack said.

Her eyes found his face. “Then what what?” she said.

“After he grabbed you and hurt your arm.”

“I don’t know. I screamed at him. It really hurt. My arm hung there. I turned away. I was going to go to the canoe and find the phone and call Pickle Lake for a flight out. I was done. As far as I was concerned, the marriage was over. I told him.” Her face remained placid but the tears ran.

Jack said, “You had a phone? ” He thought how badly they could use it now, to call in a chopper, to get her out.

She nodded.

“Then what?”

“He was yelling that the marriage was not over, no way, and he grabbed me again and I spun back and hit him with my good hand. I slapped him, I guess, and I knocked his glasses off. They hit the rocks. Broke. His only pair. We just stared at them. He’s pretty nearsighted.”

“Nearsighted?” Jack said.

“He told me once that at forty feet he can see it’s a dog but not what kind of dog.”

A lot was coming clear: why the man had been straining to see the drop of the falls when he had come around the bend, why he hadn’t chosen to ambush them at that first pullout but had tried at the second falls—because he didn’t trust his vision and he needed them to be very close and tightly grouped. Where he’d been waiting on the ledge, the pullout was only twenty feet below him; they would have paddled right into the blast of his shotgun had Jack not made them take out above. Pierre could still paddle downstream, because running whitewater, he would see the blurred white of the big holes, enough to navigate around them. Damn.

“Then what?” Jack murmured.

“I said, ‘Fuck you, serves you right,’ and I walked away.” Tears were streaming now.

“And?”

“I don’t know. I blacked out.”

Jack and Wynn looked at each other. Wynn cleared his throat. He was about to speak but thought better of it. Jack said, “What kind of study?” She blinked. “What kind of study were you two doing?”