Gary Paulsen - The River

In the end Brian did get him to skid — about three inches at a time. He heaved and jerked and pulled until finally Derek was on the bank, lying on his side, facing the water.

There was a small ledge and a drop of approximately six inches to the water. This close in to the shore the lake was very shallow, not enough water to float the raft, and Brian had to horse the raft sideways to get it in so that it was lying sideways next to Derek and just below him, grounded on the mud of the bottom.

He kneeled in the water next to the raft. He had been soaked since starting to build the raft and figured to remain wet until… until they made it. He did not wish to think of the alternatives.

He used his hip to jam the raft into the bank and reached across to pull Derek onto the raft.

Again, it was like moving lead weight. Derek seemed bolted to the earth and Brian had to settle for pulling first one end, then the other, back and forth from Derek’s arms to his ankles until the man was at last on the raft, which settled into the mud of the bottom under Derek’s weight and remained solid.

Brian positioned him first on his back and then decided he might choke and moved him over onto his side, in the center of the raft. The middle cross-piece on the raft caught Derek in the soft part just above his hip and helped to hold him in place, but Brian did not think it would be enough. He tore more strips from his jacket and made a tie-down. This he used to go from one side of the raft, over Derek’s shoulders to the other side, to tie him into position.

Finally, with Derek lashed in, Brian used Derek’s own jacket rolled up to make a pillow, which he worked beneath Derek’s head.

He checked the breathing and heartbeat again and he was surprised to see that he did it almost automatically. It had just been hours — just over a day and a half — and he was already reacting automatically.

“Derek, I don’t know if you can hear me.” He settled in the water next to the grounded raft and spoke to Derek’s face. “I’m going to tell you anyway. We’re going to take this raft down the river that leads from the lake. It’s just under a hundred miles to a trading post. The thing is, we can’t stay here because… well, it just wouldn’t work. And the radio was blown by the same lightning that hit you. So we can’t call for help. So we have to do this, we have to do this….” He shook his head, choked, realized that he was close to crying. “Oh, hell, we just have to do this — I hope it works out.”

He started to work the raft out of the mud and float it free when he thought of something.

What if they came unexpectedly?

If they just found Derek and Brian gone, they wouldn’t know what to think.

He had to leave a note.

He opened the briefcase and took out a pencil and a notebook. He wrote in large, block letters. Big storm.Derek hit by lightning and in coma.Trying to raft river down toBrannock’s Trading Post 100 milessouth. Come quick. BRIAN ROBESON

He studied the note, then added the date and time. He had left the radio behind back up in the campsite, thinking it would be in the way. He ran back up to the shelter and found the radio in its plastic case and folded the note and put it in the case so that it stuck out slightly. Then he tied the radio back up under the overhang with its carrying strap so that anybody coming into the shelter would be certain to see it.

Back at the raft he found that Derek’s weight had pushed it into the bottom so hard, it was difficult to get loose.

He sawed it back and forth, one end out, then the other and finally it broke free, though floating still in little more than a foot of water.

“Good place to test it,” he said. It seemed very stable with just Derek on it and Brian carefully eased his knees onto the end by Derek’s feet.

The end sank lower a few inches, but still was well above the surface. He raised on his knees and rocked back and forth, ready to jump off if it started over. The raft bobbed back to level and settled from the roll fast, the flat bottom slapping the water lightly.

“It’s seaworthy.” He climbed back off the raft and checked Derek again. He was resting in the same position. Some water had come up between the logs and made his shoulders wet, but his head was up on the jacket pillow and was still dry.

Brian looked at the sun.

It was mid-afternoon. Dark was still five or six hours away — not that it mattered. Once they started they would have to keep moving, even through the night if they could.

Time was everything.

The river left the lake at the south end, a good half mile away. Rather than try to move the raft across the lake, he decided to pull it around the edge in the shallows and he started moving along the shore.

The raft followed easily and Brian let himself feel just the slightest bit positive for the first time since the lightning had hit them.

The raft seemed to work well. The weather was holding. They had a map.

And most of all, Derek was still alive.

They had a shot at it.

Their luck held.

Where the river left the lake it cut a deeper channel in the soft bottom. It took Brian half an hour to move the raft down the side of the lake, pulling it along by hand, and where the river exited he moved to the left shore and stopped for a moment.

One last thought. He could still go back. It would be easy to take the raft back around the lake, and possible — though certainly not easy — to drag Derek back up to the shelter. Once they were on the river, with the current, he would not be able to work back.

But he hesitated only a moment. Any choosing was already finished and he shook his head.

It was done.

He climbed onto the back of the raft, kneeling at Derek’s feet as he had before, and used the pole to push it away from the bank and out into the current.

The river was sixty or seventy feet across, leaving the lake, and the current at the sides seemed a bit slower. It caught the raft and pulled the nose around, so it aimed downstream but along the edge, bouncing against the bank and sliding beneath overhanging willows and brush.

Brian used the pole — the bottom was four or five feet down — and pushed the raft sideways out into the center.

It hesitated, seemed to hold for a moment as if trying to find the current, then the moving water caught the logs and the raft started to move.

Inside of thirty feet it was matching the current, or close to it, and Brian watched the banks sliding past as the raft moved silently down the river.

“We’re on the way,” he said to Derek. “It’s working and we’re on the way.”

For a hundred yards the river moved straight, then curved hard to the left around a small hill where Brian quickly found that a log raft is not the same as a boat.

The current was not fast — as he had guessed earlier it was about the speed of a person walking — but it was steady and strong. The logs were heavy and once they were moving in a direction they were hard to turn.

As a matter of fact, Brian thought, watching the bank at the end of the curve come at him, they were impossible to turn.

The river curved left and the raft went straight, cut across the curve, and jammed into the bank.

The jar of the sudden stop, even moving slowly, rocked the raft and Derek rolled against the lashings and almost fell in.

Brian leaped forward on the raft, fell on Derek and held him while the raft lurched, slid sideways, and settled against the bank, where it stuck in the dirt and brush on the edge of the river.

One hundred yards and they were stopped.

Brian slid off the raft — waist deep in the water — pushed it sideways back out into the current, climbed back on and sat for half a minute while the river curved back around to the right and the raft jammed into the left bank.