Walter Williams - The Rift

Arlette adjusted the scope the wrong way, overcorrected, then finally found the horizon. “The river bends around to the left, I can’t see much,” she said. “But what I can see is white. Like fog or something.”

“Mist,” Jason croaked. He gulped a shallow breath. “That’s from water going over the falls.”

Arlette nudged the scope, panning along the horizon. Then she gave a start. “There’s a boat!” she cried. “A big boat right ahead of us!”

Bubba grinned, showing his yellow peg teeth. “Now that’s the best news I heard in three weeks.”

He pushed the throttle forward. Jason winced at a jolt of pain and turned again to hang over the port side of the cockpit. The bow planed upward, and Arlette put the cap on the telescope to keep spray from spattering the lens, then returned the Astroscan to the nearest of the boat’s coolers. Delight danced in her eyes.

“It’s over!” she cried. “It’s over!”

Jason didn’t know whether he was pleased by this prospect or not.

Debris clattered on the hull, then was left bouncing in the wake. Rafts of logs were overtaken and left astern. Bubba leaned out over the starboard side, frowned at what he saw ahead.

“That’s not a boat,” he said. “That’s a barge.” He reached a hand to the throttle to lower his speed, then hesitated. “Hey, they’s people on board!” he said. “They must have lost their tow in that quake last night.”

Jason straightened again, biting back the pain, and peered over the bows. A slab-walled barge was clearly visible downstream, broadside to the current. He could barely make out two people on board, both waving frantically.

“Well,” Bubba said. “At least they can tell us where the hell we are.”

He throttled down as the bass boat neared the barge. It was loaded with what looked like huge steel bottles, and mooring hawsers trailed fore and aft.

As the noise of the outboard lessened and the bow dropped into the water, Jason heard a rumbling sound ahead and looked to see the horizon ahead filled with white mist.

“Look!” Jason said, pointing, and he hissed with pain at his own abrupt gesture. “Mist from the falls!” he panted. “There’s a dam ahead! We’ve got to get those people off the barge before it goes over the dam!”

Bubba looked startled. He maneuvered Retired and Gone Fishin’ alongside the rust-streaked flank of the barge, looked up at the two hard-hatted men peering over the gunwale.

White men, Jason thought. The pale faces looked strange after his time in the camp.

“Get in, you fellas,” Bubba said. “Before the barge goes into them rapids.”

“We can’t!” one of the men said. “You’ve got to tow us clear!”

Bubba made a scornful sound, spread both hands to indicate the bass boat. “This look like a towboat to you? We got a fifty-horse Johnson here.”

“This barge is full of nuclear waste.” the man answered. “If it goes over the falls, it’ll poison the river for twenty years.”

“You’ve got to tow us clear!” the other man said.

Bubba looked bewildered. “Ain’t gonna happen, man! Look at this little boat! How many tons cargo you got there?”

“It doesn’t matter!” the first man screamed. “You’ve got to tow us out of here!”

Nuclear waste, Jason thought. What he’d seen already on the river was bad enough, the rafts of dead birds, the terror of the harbor of Memphis and the gassed-out city of Helena, but this. . poison the river for twenty years.

Jason looked at Bubba. “We need to try,” he said.

“Yes,” Arlette said. “There’s not much current.”

“ Try ,” Bubba snorted. Then he shrugged. “Okay. We try.” He looked up at the two crewmen. “Pass us a line,” he said.

One of the crewmen ran to the bows, pulled the dripping mooring line from the river. Bubba nudged the throttle, steered the boat to where the crewmen waited. “Look at that!” Bubba said, gesturing at the six-inch-thick hawser. “What are we going to hitch that to?”

Jason wrenched his head around to look at the little mooring cleats placed fore and aft on the bass boat. There was no way the hawser could pass around them.

“Tie it to my seat!” he said. “I’ll sit on the deck up front!”

“You’d just have your seat ripped out,” Bubba said.

“We’ll pass you a cable!” the crewman shouted.

He dangled a steel cable over the flat bows of the barge. Manon grabbed it, pulled, gave a surprised shout as the cable tried to rip the flesh from her hands. “Sorry!” the crewman said, removed his pair of leather gloves, and tossed them to Manon.

“There’s no way,” Bubba said. “Those little cleats will tear right off.”

“Use all of them!” Jason said. “I’ve seen how you tie barges together!” He moved over into the little jumpseat between him and Bubba. “You lash the cable onto the cleats. I’ll steer- I’m used to the boat.”

Bubba gave Jason a dubious look, then jumped up and took the pair of gloves from Manon. The crewmen on the barge began feeding him cable. Jason wedged himself in behind the wheel of the bass boat. The seat and the side of the cockpit was in just the right position to put pressure on his wound, and a sudden sharp spasm made him draw in a shuddering breath.

He could hear the roaring of water ahead. He looked downstream and saw that more of the bend ahead had been opened as they’d come downstream. White mist rose between the trees.

Bubba lashed the cable around all six of the boat’s cleats, the steel wire zigzagging over the casting platforms fore and aft of the cockpit. Manon and Arlette stepped clear as the cable passed beneath their feet. “I tell you one thing, man,” Bubba said. “One of these cleats tears free, this wire is going to cut us in half.” He looked at Jason. “All set, boy,” he said.

Ignoring the flare of pain, Jason looked over his shoulder at the bows of the barge that loomed behind them, took a gasping breath. “You guys ready!” he said.

“Go! Go!” one of the men screamed.

“God,” said Bubba. “I wish I had a smoke.”

Jason shifted the boat out of neutral, nudged the throttle forward. Retired and Gone Fishin’ began to move forward, then came to a sudden check as it reached the end of its tether. The engine took on a labored note as it began to feel the strain. Jason pushed the throttle forward, saw the cable tighten around the cleats. He was breathing in rapid pants, the oxygen fueling the adrenaline that snarled through his body. He could feel the boat vibrating at the end of the steel wire. He pushed the throttle forward again, slowly moving it as far forward as it would go.

The engine roared. The stern dug into the water, and the bow lifted, not because it was planing out of the water, but because the cable was holding the boat back. Jason turned the wheel, and somewhat to his surprise he found that he was swinging the bow of the barge upstream, toward safety.

He straightened the wheel and the full weight of the barge came onto the cable. The stern dug in and the racing engine began to labor. Pungent engine exhaust drifted over the boat, stung Jason’s nostrils. He gasped for a breath of fresh air. Foam creamed aft of the boat, whipped to a froth by the racing propeller. Bubba, standing on the foredeck, began to dance a few nervous steps as he looked at the cable drawn taut over the deck.

Jason looked left and right, tried to judge his motion relative to the trees in the flood plain. “Are we moving?” he breathed. “Can you tell?”

Manon and Arlette peered at the cypress on the banks. Long minutes ticked by. The bass boat shivered and hummed as it strained at the end of its leash.

Manon turned to Jason, shook her head. “We’re still going downstream,” she said. “The current’s beating us!”