which was apparently Jack’s MO—who had known he had the temper of a killer? What Wynn was thinking as they drifted past a gravel bar on the right bank and an odd hump there, blackened and reeking like burned hair. He steered them closer in the easy current and they passed the stony flat within ten feet and he saw sticks jutting from the pile and the stench made him gag and then he realized it was a mother bear and cub, lying together and half burned, and he did gag and nothing came up.
“Jesus,” Jack said. The cub was half under the mother as if seeking shelter, and in places the mama bear’s hide was burned away and the fat beneath it too and the charry bones came through. They must have run just ahead of the juggernaut and made it across the river and been overcome with smoke and then it flashed over.
They drifted past and Jack said, “Hey, hey, wait a sec. Big. Pull over. We can salvage the meat.”
“No way.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
Wynn had gone ghost-white. He wiped his mouth on his forearm and his lips trembled and he took two strong strokes and let the current carry them past. This time he didn’t listen to his friend. He was no way going to disturb the pair, and plus no meat from them would ever stay down.
Jack glared. Wynn did not apologize this time. He looked past his friend and paddled.
* * *
How long? Nobody kept track. The raw sun rose clear of the smoke and let a white sky rinse clean the blood. It tipped past its zenith. They paddled. It was not desultory, it was deliberate and slow. Nobody spoke. She slept. No more eagles as sentries flying down off the tops of the tallest trees, they were blackened spires standing along the banks like the masts of wrecked ships, and the fire had burned away the branches and the big nests. No more flycatchers chattering, no mergansers winging in pairs fast upstream, no more loons loosing their laughter and wails. Only the sift of current through the stubbed limbs of a burned and fallen pine, the occasional knock of a paddle, the sip of the dipping blades as they lifted out of water. At some time in the afternoon Wynn muttered, then called, “Fucking A.”
“What?”
“Look.”
Jack looked. On the right bank the burn ended. Or paused. It was like the border of another country. There was black wasteland and then there was green—willows, alders, the boisterous fireweed flushing pink. And woods—the green-black of the spruce and fir, the rusty tamarack and yellowing birch. It was a miracle. What it felt like.
“Damn.”
“It’s a creek,” Wynn said. It was. Wider than the ones they’d seen so far. The creek and the wind together had somehow conspired a hard edge. Pretty hard. A few of the taller trees in the green country had burned, but they had burned like torches in mostly solitary glory, and the boys could see that some had burned only partway, on one side, or in just the tops, and that the rest still lived. Wynn wondered if a tree had some analogy to pain. Or what pain would look like for a being without nerves.
“Should we see if there’s fish?” he said.
“We’d better. Since we don’t have any bear meat.”
Wynn kept his mouth shut and set a harder J and paddled them in.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Would a creek at the very edge boil? Would the fish on this side of the big river sense a fire and flee the way the others might have?
It was a blackwater creek like the others and scattered with white ash that must have drifted. In the eddies was a fine dust that filmed the water like pollen.
They saw no trout at first but strung the rods anyway. They were getting testy, they could feel reserves of goodwill sapping away. They needed to eat and they figured now, at least, if they got skunked with fish and protein they could scavenge for berries and consume enough calories to paddle out. A huge relief. They grounded the boat and Maia woke up and they hauled her higher onshore and unclipped the dry bag behind her and pulled out the rods. Wynn asked her if she needed help getting out or peeing or anything and she shook her head and the boys walked upstream a little and jointed their rods and began to fish. This time Wynn followed