All Those Drawn to Me

by Christian Petersen

  The town was picturesque, in its own way, lying at the junction of two rivers, the big brown Fraser and the milky green Quesnel. These names derived from Simon Fraser and one of his voyageurs, on their expedition in 1808.

  Andrew Salling had a room booked at the Wheel Inn. Next door was the former Hudson’s Bay trading post dating from the mid-1800s, with ten-foot walls of squared logs and a cedar shake roof. The highway north through town made a ninety-degree turn when it reached the river, then for a mile was called Front Street, before it turned into highway again. From there it was roughly two thousand miles north to Alaska, a future trip he had in mind.

  The hillsides were defined with autumn colours, and, if one ignored the licence plates and the absence of Confederate history, the town did not differ much from some places in Virginia. There were more cowboys and Indians around, apparently the genuine article, which intrigued him. He had spoken with some of them, such as the pair last night on the back step of the Cariboo Hotel. For a Thursday night the place was loud and lively as he passed by on Front Street, music blared out the doors as patrons piled in. Someone started up on the fiddle, and he decided it was worth a closer look. He found local watering holes often provided a good reading on the population, thus the labour pool, a little background to file away. Andrew had never seen anything quite like the Cariboo Hotel in full swing.

  The bartender was a bull Indian with swift hands. Andrew scrutinized the liquor section on the mirrored shelves behind the bar, and Jack Daniel’s was really his only resort.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, as the glass slid to rest in front of him. The big guy stared at him, specifically he stared at Andrew’s moustache. This was a vanity, he allowed, and the waxed ends these days were less common. For his second drink, the bartender gestured thanks for the dollar tip.

  Standing at the quieter end of the noisy bar, Andrew considered his work. After a week of meetings and investigation it was clear the site proposed for the pulp mill was good — excellent, in fact. Local sawmills were booming and could provide an endless supply of both clean chips for pulp and hog fuel for the steam plant. Furthermore, whether he would include it in his report or not, there were other sites almost as good. Potential for more than one mill. As for the local labour pool, looking over the bar, he wondered. But the mill construction alone would bring in hundreds of tradesmen, managers and engineers, and others would follow for the jobs in production.

  On that evening, Andrew enjoyed the general hullabaloo, even the smells there in the old frontier hotel, all as a taste of something soon to pass. The town did not know what would hit it. A fight broke out near the front doors and the bartender waded into the melee with a hockey stick and a grin.

  Andrew left his drink and made for the rear exit, from which he stepped into a gravel lot. Two cowboys leaned against the flatbed of a truck, one was an Indian.

  “Gotta smoke?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not, my friend, I smoke a pipe.”

  “Tobacco?” said the other, in brown hat and soiled blue bandana, and the rest of the regalia.

  “Well, it’s curly cut Virginian, not generally rolled into cigarettes,” Andrew replied.

  “Lemme try it. … You talk funny, where you from?”

  “Lexington, Virginia,” Andrew muttered as he extracted his tobacco pouch, and placed a good-sized pinch in the man’s palm. The cowboys immediately rolled cigarettes.

  “Where’s that?”

  “South,” Andrew replied. “Virginia is a southern state. And Lexington was the home of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, among others.”

  “Who are they?” asked the Indian cowboy, savouring his smoke.

  “They were the greatest generals of the Confederate Army during the Civil War, last century of course.”

  “Huh,” the brown hat offered, staggering two steps to the side. “What ’bout Vietnam?”

  Andrew studied these two men, who had not said thank you for the tobacco, and knew to move on. “Not sure I follow you. Goodbye.”

  “What ’bout Vietnam!” the fellow yelled after him.

  Next morning began his last day in town, and Andrew Salling chose to spend it fishing. He’d been out a couple of times before, but never for a full day. And he’d heard the fishing might be good at Beavermouth, about an hour’s drive up the Quesnel River valley. The rental truck took a bit of a beating on the back road. In the presidential election the previous year, Andrew had departed from the Democrats to vote for George Wallace, based on a few Southern principles. Overall Virginia supported Nixon anyway. Getting back to the cowboy’s peculiar question: Vietnam was a mess. The world was going to hell, in his view, and just faster in some parts than others.

  Beaver Creek was at low water, and where its clear stream met the milky Quesnel did look promising. Andrew stood on the bank with his pipe and surveyed the water. The creek pushed a long bar of gravel thirty yards into the river, where the water ran only a foot or two deep. He could wade out there and then cast back into the long deep run along the treed bank. He fit together his cane Hardy, and attached an Orvis reel. He peeled off some line and fed it through the guides, then stretched some of the curl out the nylon leader and attached two feet of tippet. As for a fly, he did not know what a local might use, but he was fond of traditional ones, such as the Alexandra, which he tied on. Silver body, with green peacock, red and black hackle.

  He stepped into his chest waders, donned his vest and hat, and stepped into the creek. At that point the creek fanned out somewhat, the water ran fast below his knees. He tested his footing in the felt-soled rubbers and moved carefully downstream.

  He noticed an autumn crispness in the air already, which reminded him he was far from Virginia, and would soon return to a much warmer September. This sky was a deep northern blue, with clouds passing through, alternating shadow and sunlight. He marvelled at how each river he had known was unique, colours running the spectrum from clear as glass to black, through so many hues of blue and green, and while fishing, a part of his mind often played in search of the best descriptors to later write in his journal.

  From just over knee-deep in his waders, Andrew could now cast within twenty yards to deeper water at the head of the run. It followed the bank where a few giant roots jutted out and in places a curved lip of turf undercut by spring floods. The bottom of the run was imposed upon by a hundred-foot spruce that had fallen some years before, the branches devoid of needles, like a hay rake cutting the water.

  Patiently he laid the line out at forty-five degrees across the current, watched it curl into the deeper water. On his third cast a fierce strike threw him off balance, the line slipped through his fingers, lost tension, and the fish shook free.

  “Damn!” he said aloud, coiling in line to cast again. He played the same spot a few casts, then moved five paces, and cast again for a while, covering a new vector of water. In this way he moved down the run over the course of an hour. A few more tentative strikes, smaller trout, nothing like the first one. Isn’t that the way, he thought. Two months ago Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, now there’s a first for you. Andrew had to admire the man, there being no way on God’s green earth you’d find him climbing into a rocket.

  His knees had gone a bit numb in the icy water, and he felt as though he could use a sandwich and a cup of coffee, which was waiting back in the truck. So he took his last cast, still hoping for another strike like the first one. He let his line trail down toward the fallen spruce, and only realized that was too far when the leader snagged underwater on a branch. He first let the line go slack, hoping the current would pull the hook free, and when that didn’t work he cautiously tugged the line in his hand, taking care not to bend the cane rod for this. Nothing doing. He could not get anywhere near the snag as it was in five feet of swift water, so he had little choice but to break the leader. He took a wrap around his hand and did so, feeling his weight teeter a bit in the current.

  He turned upstream to wade back to the truck. Only
then did he realize the water was almost up to his crotch, and he felt a tightening there. The surface curved like a broad green muscle against him, frothing on his thighs. Andrew took a breath and extended his arms for balance, his Hardy outstretched in his right hand. One step, he told himself, and made that. He made another.

  On the next, his boot slipped on the polished bed stones and his legs were swept out from under him, his exclamation lost in the splash. In a moment the current pulled him ten yards downstream into the scaly branches of the dead spruce. The cane rod snapped between them. Andrew reached up to grasp the thick arm of a branch, and managed to do so. This opened the top of his waders directly to the rushing water; like a rubber funnel, they filled with a hundred pounds of water and dragged him under. Five feet, eight feet, ever more.

  * * *

  To the depths of life on nature’s current,

  flowing, clung to a raft of innocence, aquatic lust the frothing current,

  the water’s song plays inner sense.

  — Troy Forcier , “The Raft”

  With her travel mug of coffee and a raisin bagel early Saturday morning, in the 4Runner she had rescued from her marriage, kayak strapped on top, hands at ten and two, Kim drove hard toward Likely. Turned off 97 just before 150 Mile, tires chirped and whined, out past Big Lake, through Beaver Valley. The club was meeting at ten for a day’s paddling on the upper Quesnel, and being fairly new she did not want to hold them up.

  Post-divorce last year Kim cut her dark hair, dropped the hyphen and McGuire from her name (it had always sounded like an upstart law firm: Lang-McGuire), she ran more, skied more, trained in the gym, dragged her orange Pyranha out from the rafters of the garage and joined the kayak club. After nine years of dual income and no kids she and Gary had all the gear, barely used. She didn’t know how they had fallen into such a pattern: pursue a new interest, spend a few thousand dollars, order accessories online, and after a season or two stow it all neatly in the garage. It wasn’t all his fault, obviously, takes two to perpetuate the chronic lethargy that did them in. As far as sex with Gary it was the same, all the gear but not much use.

  She sipped coffee, hummed along to the radio, at one point had to swerve into the other lane when a moose stepped onto the road. Had it turned her way that could have ruined her 4Runner, and her day, she might have been killed. She lightened her foot on the pedal, and was still the second vehicle to arrive at the rendezvous site.

  “Hey Kim,” Nancy called from where she and her husband Leo had their boats on the ground and were checking them over. Shortly thereafter JJ and Becky showed up, then Javier and his new girlfriend.

  “Wahooo, hi all!” the new blond whooped when she swung out of the Jeep, then gave handsome Javier a long kiss.

  Oh boy, thought Kim. In fifteen minutes they were ready to go, waiting for Geoff to arrive, once again.

  “I’m getting tired of this,” Leo said, never shy with an opinion. “If he can’t drag himself out of bed to be here on time he should stay home and sleep it off.”

  This referred to Geoff’s youth, lifestyle and habit of being late. Kim could appreciate the others’ frustration, but she was biased toward Geoff, as she had slept with him twice recently, so she was concerned that he might not show at all, or that something might have happened on the road. They had talked last night, before he went out with his soccer buddies. They talked about driving out together this morning, but Kim was not yet ready to let anyone else know there was anything between them. He was only twenty-seven, for one thing, eleven years younger than herself. The cougar thing was not for her, but his youth was kind of nice actually, a very athletic body, and lots of energy. He was her first lover since the end of her marriage. Once she had called him Gary by mistake, though they were nothing alike, and he laughed it off.

  Right then his pickup barrelled into the parking area, music blaring, and he was out and changed and had his boat ready in five. “Sorry, Leo, everybody, I had to stop for gas and shit.”

  His unshaven charm outweighed his tardiness for most of them, including JJ and Becky. Good to have those girls on board. He gave Kim a wink as he carried his paddle and gear to the river’s edge.

  The kayaks were lined up orange, red, yellow, teal blue and ivory white. Sleek and strong, some of the very best craft. Kim’s own Pyranha, an Ina Zone 232, was the oldest of the lot. They strapped on their helmets, and put in one at a time, the women helping one another. Javier’s blondie appeared to know what she was doing, so far.

  Kim knew everyone felt better with Geoff along, not for his charm so much as his paddling skills and knowledge of the river. He’d been running the upper Quesnel River since he was a teen, in rafts, canoes and kayaks. It is class III/IV water, and conditions change with the seasons, so there are always new hazards.

  With some banter and whooping they started down the river. Leo and Nancy in the lead, while Geoff hung back at the rear near Kim, drifted a slow 360° in his blue playboat, and made a few faces at her.

  “Watch what you’re doing,” she laughed, as he went backwards through an overhanging alder in a shower of yellow leaves.

  They enjoyed the upper half of the run, over a couple of hours, then stopped for lunch on a sunny sandbar. Eight fit people in their wetsuits, Kim enjoyed this. She did not have as much experience paddling as the other women, but they marvelled at the strength in her shoulders, she had good balance, and her skills were now almost on par.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Geoff said to her, standing in his suit. The others had yet to tuck away their lunches, were sharing a bar of Toblerone. “Sure,” she smiled, pulling on her helmet.

  “We’ll play around in the next five hundred metres,” he said to the others, “then there is a big open stretch and we’ll wait there if you haven’t caught up.”

  It felt like the next small step between them, to go as a pair. She sensed the glances shared among the other women. She loved watching Geoff traverse the river so easily and make the most of any whitewater. She studied his approach and did her best to follow.

  They floated left around a broad bend where the water flowed fairly fast, at uniform depth all across. Then the water slowed, going into more of a trench that curved to the right, and the water was more shallow to the inside. This is the line that Geoff followed. He glanced back at one point, and yelled something she couldn’t make out. The water was a deep jade green in the sunlight, and for a moment she just drifted enjoying the beauty. Geoff was now out of sight momentarily. She drifted a bit far left for the turn.

  “Kim!” he called, with his kayak crossways in a back eddy near the far bank. She turned to him with a smile — then drove her paddle down to the left, clenching her jaw. Geoff’s paddle was pointed toward a giant fallen cottonwood, which now barred two-thirds of the river. Other dead trees had lodged against this, forming a hazard that had not been there the last time they ran the Quesnel.

  Although the current was not very fast at that point, the depth gave it power, and carried her straight toward the logjam. Kim paddled furiously toward Geoff, who had no way to help her. Her orange Pyranha turned upstream, she lost sight of the logs behind her and a jolt of terror shot through her gut. She tried to correct the angle, and the boat wobbled. She could not get —

  “Kim!” Geoff yelled, “bail now! Bail out!”

  Her boat went into the tangle of logs about the halfway point, where the three-foot trunk of the cottonwood was half submerged; the kayak flipped, bowed, was swept underneath and wedged there under six feet of water.

  Her sight and hearing were useless, she was upside down in a hellish silence with the current forcing her body against the logs. Her mouth clamped shut. An intense ache filled her lungs. As she wriggled her hips free of the kayak she had to make a decision, whether to go downstream, try to get underneath the logjam, or — either way was —

  She braced her feet, pushed off to swim back under the big log, upstream. The current was like an enormous vehicle, a coasting railway car she ha
d to stop — then push just a few yards the other way. Arms slashed by branches, she felt no pain, fired by adrenaline, terror. No air. Her hands struck a branch driven deep in the riverbed. She grasped this, pulled herself deeper, wriggled under the armpit of the giant tree, and then surfaced on the upstream side of the jam.

  “Kim!” Geoff screamed, “oh Jesus baby, here!” Bright yellow rope hit the side of her face and she snatched it like an animal.

  Geoff had somehow got himself on top of the logjam, and clambered across to the point where she had disappeared. Kim now kicked against the broken wood, tearing her suit and skin, with the rope between her hands. Geoff hauled her body upward, into his arms. She felt the frantic sobbing of his body, heard him repeating her name in a strangled voice. Her eyes were fixed down on the roaring water she had just escaped from. Half the left leg of the suit was shredded, her calf muscle torn, pulsing blood. First her jaw, then her shoulders, then her entire body began to shake.

  Horse from Persia

  December 9, 1879

  The Kamloops posse, led by Justice of the Peace John Clapperton, had by now learned of the outlaws’ whereabouts and converged on the cabin they occupied. Notes were exchanged. On the scrap of paper, Clapperton read:

  Mr. Clapperton,

  Sir —

  The Boys say they will not surrender, and so you can burn the house a thousand times over.

  Alexr J. Hare

  I wish to know what you all have against me. If you have anything, please let me know what it is.

  A.H.

  After two days without food or water the gang surrendered.

  January 31, 1881