The River - Peter Heller Page 0,2
away from land would kill them, so they were very careful to power through the whitecaps at an angle. They both paddled on their knees to keep the center of gravity low. It was exhausting. Then the wind died all at once as if throttled and in less than half an hour the lake glassed off and they felt suspended in fog. They moved within a moving nimbus in which only a few yards of black water were visible in any direction, and the pale fog drifted in tatters like stubborn smoke. The water whispered along the hull and it had a silver sheen that reminded Wynn of rayon. All of it was dreamlike; he thought of a Poe novel he had read in which the castaways are pulled toward the South Pole and the current they are riding gets warmer and calmer as they go.
Wynn stopped paddling. As the bowman today he set the pace and so Jack quit paddling too and they glided. The boat was sleek Kevlar, nineteen feet, and with a V’d hull in bow and stern it glided straight. There was something satisfying in a cessation of paddling on smooth water. It was like watching a flock of ducks all stop beating at once and sail over a bank of trees on extended wings.
“That was weird,” Jack said.
“Fucking A. Which part?”
“I can tick them off,” Jack said. He set the paddle across the spray deck and pried a tin of Skoal out of his shirt’s breast pocket. He was soaked from spray, but Jack never wore a rain jacket when he was paddling because he said he got just as wet from sweat, even in the breathable stuff. He also didn’t use bug dope, on principle. He tucked a pinch into his lip. “Let’s see: Wind and fog together, that’s a first. Oh yeah, and frost. The sudden calm. The shouts. And this. This is kinda weird.”
Wynn didn’t say anything. They were still gliding and something about the near silence was like a sacrament. He stuck a finger in the dark water and it was still cold, probably near forty degrees, and he watched his finger cut a small V-wake. It was the only sure sign of motion. “I was thinking of that story by Poe,” he said finally. “Arthur Gordon Pym.”
“Yeah, right?” Jack spat. “I wonder who they were. It sounded like a couple.”
“Maybe we’ll see them again.”
“I hope not. All morning I’ve been wondering if we should’ve stopped.”
“To tell them about the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“It would’ve been dicey,” Wynn said. He meant to surf in—and what if the beach had been broken limestone? They called any open shoreline that ran smoothly to the water a beach.
Jack said, “I was thinking maybe we should have stopped and tried to hail them.”
They drifted. “Want some lunch?” Wynn said.
“Okay. I guess we’re good with the deck.”
They unbuttoned the spray deck from its cleats and Jack rummaged in the day bag and pulled out a brick of sharp cheddar, a dry summer sausage, and a Ziploc full of half-broken Triscuits. He sat up on the cane seat. There was a small cutting board in the bag, too, and Jack flipped open his clip knife and set the board on his knees and sliced the cheese and sausage.
* * *
They were best friends at Dartmouth who had decided to take the summer and fall quarters off. They had worked as wilderness instructors for an outdoor program in the Adirondacks all June and July, and they decided to blow half their savings on the flights in and out of the river in the old Otter floatplane. Neither was attached. Jack had broken up with his high school sweetheart in the spring. She lived in the Fraser valley of Colorado, near Granby, where Jack’s family had their small ranch.
Wynn had not had a girl since junior year at the Putney School in Vermont. It was kind of a fancy boarding school, but his family lived three miles away and he was a day student. He’d dated the daughter of a movie star, who’d found him exotic and rustic, and he told Jack he had known it wouldn’t work when he went home with her to Malibu during spring break and they’d all gone out to brunch on a weekday and the star mother and the daughter ordered eggs Florentine and he’d asked what it was and both their heads swiveled and the mother said, “Wynn, it’s like Benedict but