logging trucks to haul their cutwood this far, maybe even teams of horses. The clearing had been their turnaround point. Here they had unloaded their pulpwood and sent it skidding down to the Dennison River, where it would start its ride to the various mill towns downstate.
Luke made his way down this last slope on legs that ached and trembled. The final two hundred feet were the steepest yet, the track sunk all the way to bedrock by the passage of those long-ago logs. He sat down and let himself slide, grabbing at bushes to slow his progress a little and finally coming to a tooth-rattling stop on a rocky bank three or four feet above the water. And here, just as Maureen had promised, the prow of a splintery old rowboat peeped from beneath a green tarp drifted with pine needles. It was tethered to a ragged stump.
How had Maureen known about this place? Had she been told? That didn’t seem sure enough, not when a boy’s life might depend on that rickety old boat. Maybe before she’d gotten sick, she had found it on a walk by herself. Or she and a few others—maybe a couple of the cafeteria women with whom she seemed friendly—had come down here from their quasi-military village to picnic: sandwiches and Cokes or a bottle of wine. It didn’t matter. The boat was here.
Luke eased himself into the water, which came up to his shins. He bent and scooped double handfuls into his mouth. The river water was cold and tasted even sweeter than the blueberries. Once his thirst was slaked, he tried to untie the rope tethering the boat to the stump, but the knots were complex, and time was passing. In the end he used the paring knife to saw through the tether, and that started his right palm bleeding again. Worse, the boat immediately began to drift away.
He lunged for it, grabbed the prow, and hauled it back. Now both of his palms were bleeding. He tried to yank off the tarp, but as soon as he let go of the boat’s prow, the current began to pull it away again. He cursed himself for not getting the tarpaulin off first. There wasn’t enough ground to beach the boat, and in the end he did the only thing he could: got his top half over the side and under the tarp with its somehow fishy smell of ancient canvas, then pulled on the splintery midships bench until he was all the way in. He landed in a puddle of water and on something long and angular. By now the boat was being pulled downstream by the gentle current, stern first.
I am having quite the adventure, Luke thought. Yes indeed, quite the adventure for me.
He sat up under the tarp. It billowed around him, producing an even stronger stink. He pushed and paddled at it with his bleeding hands until it flopped over the side. It floated beside the rowboat at first, then began to sink. The angular thing he’d landed on turned out to be an oar. Unlike the boat, it looked relatively new. Maureen had placed the scarf; had she also placed the oar for him? He wasn’t sure she was capable of making the walk down the old logging road in her current condition, let alone down that last steep slope. If she had done it, she deserved an epic poem in her honor, at the very least. And all just because he’d looked some stuff up for her on the Internet, stuff she probably could have found herself if she hadn’t been so sick? He hardly knew how to think about such a thing, let alone understand it. He only knew the oar was here, and he had to use it, tired or not, bleeding hands or not.
At least he knew how. He was a city boy, but Minnesota was the land of ten thousand lakes, and Luke had been out fishing with his paternal grandfather (who liked to call himself “just another old basshole from Mankato”) many times. He settled himself on the center seat and first used the oar to get the fore end of the boat pointed downstream. With that accomplished, he paddled out to the center of the river, which was about eighty yards wide at this point, and shipped the oar. He took off his sneakers and started to set them on the stubby aft seat to dry. Something was printed on