The River - Peter Heller Page 0,52

Jack, then focused. “Where?” she rasped. “The other?”

“He’s holding you up, ma’am,” Jack said. “Hold on.” Jack grasped one side of the sleeping bag and Wynn shifted from behind her and came around to the front, his arm still around her shoulders. She looked from one to the other. It took great effort. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Both.” Her eyes closed again and she drifted off. They carried her to the canoe and laid her on the bed of boughs. Jack levered the rifle to open the breech and checked one more time that a cartridge was chambered, and they shoved off.

* * *

The day was half gone. They paddled steadily without letup. The wind shifted around to the west and for the first time they could see the hazy thickening of air that was not yet rolling smoke and the birds in flocks that were smaller now, and many single birds, mostly duller-colored, the females, and Wynn posited that these were the mother birds with hatchlings who had refused to leave their nests until just before the flames. That was heartbreaking if you thought about it.

The cadence of the paddle strokes was high and it hurt after a couple of hours and so they weren’t thinking about a lot. Jack had pored over the map and there would be a few riffles and smaller rapids and nothing to portage for two days, so he was at a loss as to where to expect the next attack. They had passed a wide cove with a pair of loons, one was probably nested nearby, and when they stroked past, the one closest tilted back her head and loosed a pitched wail that must have moved the trees like wind. It pierced the haze and echoed off the waiting forest and rolled over the water like any scream, and seemed to carry a pathos so deep it was a wonder a mere world could support it. Maybe she knew what was coming. Maybe she had hatchlings in a nest and nowhere to go and she knew.

Others did. Because now as they paddled into the afternoon they saw the first moose. Two. A big female with a calf. The moose trotted to the open margin of the left riverbank and clattered over the broken shale on stiff legs and entered the water without pause, and she stretched her neck and let the water sweep her without concern and set a ferry angle and swam across. The calf mimicked the mother. They could hear the chuffs of their breathing. They were only yards ahead of them. The next was a bull moose, and then a black bear with two cubs. The cubs hesitated at water’s edge, they seemed frightened, and the mama bear snorted and waded out of the river and got behind them and drove them forward. They swam. The littler one lost ground in the current and Wynn thought he would get swept away, but the mother got below him and bumped and shouldered and goaded him across. Damn. They could hear the other cub, who had reached the far bank first, bawling and bawling. They saw mink cross, and squirrels. In late afternoon Jack had his head down, paddling hard, trying to maintain the tempo, and Wynn whistled and he looked up and saw what must have been a hundred mice. They’d never heard of such a thing. It was like a miniature herd. They swarmed a steep cut bank and fell or jumped or dripped off it into the water and they swam. Who knew how they kept track of the correct direction, but they did. They came across the current in a moil.

“Looks like Dunkirk,” Jack said.

“Fucking A.”

They saw woodland caribou, a small herd of bulls at first, three smaller and two with massive racks, who took to the river as the moose did, with zero hesitation. Toward the end of the afternoon they both sang out as one: they came down through a riffle of small waves and ahead was an entire string of caribou swimming the river in single file. They counted twenty-three. Jesus. Later Jack wondered why they hadn’t thought to shoot one for meat and could only think that they’d been smitten with awe. They had never seen anything like it.

And they could see smoke now. Real smoke. It was gray, not black, and it did not plume but hazed west to east across the river as the animals had done. Still they