Питер Геллер - The River

“You don’t really like her.”

Jack’s head came around and he looked at Wynn and his eyes were dancing with the old mischief. “How should I know? Do you?”

Wynn shrugged. He pulled the canoe from his pocket and tugged free the clip knife and sprang it open with his thumb. He dug at the wood with the point where he was hollowing out the bow.

“You like her,” Jack said. “She’s your kinda gal. Smart, tough, no BS, probably pretty. She’d boss you around just like your mom.”

“Hey!” Wynn grinned. It was good to have the old Jack back. “You don’t like her?” he said. “I mean Maia. I know you love my bossy mom.”

Jack snagged the tin of Skoal from his breast pocket, where it had miraculously stayed buttoned through the swim. It was still wet but chewable. He said, “I think she comes from a world I don’t understand. That shit about competing publications. Why would you live like that?”

There was no answer forthcoming, but there was the contingent crackle of the fire and the wind fluttering through it. They were on the green side of the creek and they could hear loud crickets again. Jack said, “And how on God’s earth could that lead to murder? Murdering your wife? ”

“He must have been drunk.”

“She didn’t say that.”

“No.”

Jack said, “I’ve been thinking of that Windigo story you told me. The hungry ghost. And how the country has been drying up. And those people dying on the river last year. Like maybe the whole river is cursed. Like whatever stalked those folks in the village could turn a marital spat into murder.”

Wynn remembered in a flash Jack pointing the gun above the last portage—his best friend. Had it been a real threat? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t say anything.

In the saying nothing and in the hushed tones of the fire there was a hum of something persistent and barely registered, the twang of a bass guitar string long seconds after the last note was struck. It thrummed the dusk almost without sound, like the quality of air before a lightning storm. Jack heard it first and sat up. Wynn stopped touching the edges of his burned face and listened.

It wasn’t a lightning storm or music, it was a motor, distinct now, distant but growing closer, and it lacked the chuff and throb of an outboard, it was smoother, steadier, it thrummed through the twilight with the modest growl of an electric engine. It was the two drunks. Had to be. Jack and Wynn stood. They glanced at the woman asleep on the pad and trotted to the water. And stood there side by side like some backcountry couple who hear a strange car coming up the crick road for the first time in a year. Jack had a second thought and went back for the rifle. They waited in the dusk.

It was a gentle right bend and the long canoe appeared in the middle of it as if breached straight from the dark water, or as if the silvered water itself had formed and reformed until it gave substance to two shapes, the men, the two idiots, one thin, one fat, straining forward to interpret the flames they saw on the beach. The skinny one in the bow whistled, a piercing Bronx cheer that muted even the crickets for a startled second.

“Hey! Hey! Is it you-all?” That was the fat man.

Jack glanced at Wynn, who seemed stunned. Maybe by the dumbness of the greeting; maybe it was a trick question.

The fat man cursed. The canoe came ineluctably closer.

“Fuck a duck,” the fat man said, very clear. “It’s those kids. It’s you kids!”

“The short one’s got a gun,” the thin one said.

“So what, everybody’s got a gun up here. Hey! Hey! Fuckin’ A, we’re glad to see you-all!”

They came in like that, thrumming steadily over the dark mirror of the river, revealing the white square-tailed twenty-one-footer smirched with black, and one long gunwale, the starboard, edged and roughened with char where it had burned. “Fuckin’ A! We thought you-all were crisp by now. Damn! ”

There was something wrong with the electric motor, because it was louder than it should have been, it sounded almost like a blender, and the fat man drove the canoe straight into the rocky bar. The boat hit the stones and the two men jerked forward and back in practiced synchrony and the hull grated up onto the shore and the fat man throttled the motor two more times for good measure and cut the engine. He was grinning. He was wearing a camo Texas A&M cap and in the dusk he was all teeth. “Whew!” he said. “That was one hellstorm, wasn’t it? We thought we were safe once it jumped, but a backdraft caught us. We shoulda waited a day. Man. ” His eyes followed the creek. “Look at you-all. Just back into the green like any other Sunday. Hell, I woulda stopped here, too.” He clambered forward, knees walking on the bags of gear, and got out on dry rocks and came at them with his hand out. The thin man hadn’t budged—he was staring at the fire, at the person lying there, and Jack could almost hear the gears clicking in the man’s head from ten feet away.

“Brent. Remember me?” Fat Man shook one boy’s hand, then the other’s. “I remember you! We shoulda listened. Man! We caught fire at sea like that destroyer, whatchamacallit?” The boys had no idea. “Almost punched our ticket, I mean. That was waaay too close for comfort. Glad you-all—” He stopped short. He looked into Wynn’s face and grimaced. “Ow. You, too. That doesn’t look too good,” he said with real concern. “You boys came that close, too. I think we got some sterile bandages. JD—” He turned back to the boat and saw his buddy’s face and followed his gaze. “Wha—?”

Brent peered into the dusk, glanced back at the boys. Jack unslung the rifle, which was not lost on anyone.

“There was just two of you before,” Brent said softly.

Jack didn’t say anything. Nor Wynn. They didn’t know what to say. Neither had digested much of what they’d been through; what had happened since they’d met the men on their island was too immense.

The fat man worked his jaw, surveyed the little beach. “As far as I know there was only one other party up here—must’ve got dropped in at Moose Lake before us. A man and a woman in an Old Town. Green. A green eighteen-footer, I’d guess. We kept seeing them far off and wanted to stay out of their hair. We weren’t in no hurry.” The man spoke quietly but loud enough for his partner to hear. Jack watched as JD slowly slipped their Winchester bolt-action—probably an aught-six—out of its place under the bow deck: they had worked out the same configuration, pilot in the stern, shooter in the bow.

Brent was in no hurry now. He was a cool customer, for sure. He turned back again and looked each boy dead in the eye. It was as if he were searching for something inside them. Even in the half-light Jack could see, and remembered, the grainy mineral blue of the man’s eyes.

“Looks like her. From here. Can’t be sure. Same size, about. The long brown hair. Where’s the man?”

Silence. The crickets were at it again, and the low burble of the current and the eddy slurping the shore. Wynn cleared his throat and opened his mouth and Jack touched him with the barrel of the rifle. Wynn’s head swung around and he saw Jack’s face and shut his mouth and swallowed.

“That’s how it is, huh?” Brent said. “Some sort of Deliverance shit going on here and everyone’s clammed up?” He chewed the corner of his mouth, frowned. “We got through the goddamned fire, and I mean that was nip and tuck. Thought we had clear sailing. Fuck.” He turned his head sideways and spat. “You chewing?” he said to Jack. Jack nodded. “Give me a dip, will ya? I ran out in week two.” Jack took his left hand off the rifle and unbuttoned the shirt pocket and handed the man the tin. “Thanks.” Brent handed it back.