sweep of a coming rainstorm. As if the fire in its fury could speak in tongues, could speak the language of every enemy. And sing, too. Over the rush, very faint, was a high-pitched thrum, a humming of air that rose and fell almost in melody.
Wynn walked to the water. He peered into the dark. Between the tall trees on either bank was a swath of stars, a river of constellations that flowed heedless and unperturbed. Between the brightest, needling the arm of Orion and the head of the Bull, were distances of fainter stars that formed, as Wynn stared, a deep current, uninterrupted, as infused with bubbles of light as the aerated water of a rapid. Except that he could see into it and through it and it held fathomless dimensions that were as void of emotion as they were infinite. And if that river flowed, that firmament, it flowed with a majestic stillness. Nothing had ever been so still. Could spirit live there? In such a cold and silent purity of distance? Maybe it wasn’t silent at all. Maybe in the fires that consumed those stars were decibeled cyclones and trumpets and applause.
As in our own. Our very own voluble fire.
He looked straight across at the wall of trees: dark. A solid reassuring darkness. Not that reassuring. The rolling pops of trucks dumping gravel, the cracks of artillery, they were unnerving. How could they not see it? How could the sound travel and not the light?
What they didn’t realize is that it had. It had traveled. The entire sky was so suffused with firelight that the billion stars were as faint as they would have been under the dominion of the fullest moon.
* * *
Which had not yet risen.
Wynn walked back.
“We’re sitting ducks. Here. It’s too narrow. The fire’ll jump the river in a flash.” He sat next to Jack by the campfire. “All those animals. Those single birds. Nest-sitters, right? The last to leave.”
“What I was thinking.”
“What do you want to do?”
Jack said, “Seems like if we just sit here, we’ll die.”
They listened. The measly pops of their campfire seemed to be puling to the greater roar. Jack said, “Like falling asleep in the snow. Feels like that. Like if we camp, it’ll come.”
Wynn said, “I was looking at the map. The river must’ve changed a lot since they surveyed it. It’s been wider where I thought it’d be narrow, and there’s those wide coves that aren’t on the map.”
“Nineteen fifty-nine. Says beneath the legend. The survey’s sixty years old.”
“Rivers change every year. Maybe—”
“Don’t count on it. We’d need half a mile of river to even stand a chance of staying out of the fire.”
“Yeah.”
Jack said, “Lemme see what you’ve been carving.”
Wynn worked three fingers into the pocket of his work pants and pulled out the chunk of wood and handed it to Jack. Just small enough to fit in the palm: a canoe. What else. The exact shape of their own—the exaggerated beam dead center, the sharply tapered bow and stern, the faintest rocker along her length. He had just begun carving out the shell—the outlines of the seats and thwarts were there in bare relief. Jack ran his fingers over the whittled planes of the hull and the pads of his fingertips seemed to relish the coarse rendering, the snags and chiseled edges. He handed it back.
“Is it a sex toy?”
“Fuck off.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“No.” Jack pulled out his tin of Skoal and took a sizable dip. It’s what he often did when they were about to put in. He spat in the fire. “Ready?”
Jack walked over the stepped rock to the boat and began strapping stuff down as tight as he could while Wynn gently woke her up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
This time they all three wore the life vests. They put her in Jack’s rain jacket and added more boughs to her seat to try to keep her out of the bilge water, but once they got into any kind of real rapids or even a feisty riffle she would get soaked. Not ideal, but then there was everything about the night that was not ideal. They did not bother dousing their fire: a tip of the hat, almost an acknowledgment of respect to the coming onslaught. They helped her into the canoe and launched. This time, without discussing it, they both got low. They were both on their knees, butts against the edge of the seats,