Lava Falls

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Mother saw it differently.

  “Honey,” she said. “Let’s get it.”

  I glanced quickly up at her face. Her gaze was riveted on the still spinning boat, her thoughts a complete mystery to me at the time. That gaze, the sight of her determination, is my best memory of her. Even in midsummer, the water was numbingly cold. Yet Mother stripped off all her clothes and plunged in. Her hips swaying and her arms waving above the surface of the water, she waded out until she was navel deep, and then she swam. When she got halfway to the kayak, it bucked out of the eddy and started drifting downstream again. Tears swelled my chest as I watched her change course, begin stroking toward the boat. I didn’t think she’d make it. But she kicked harder and windmilled her arms, moving faster than the current. When she reached the boat, she hooked her arms over the cockpit’s lip and rested for as long as she dared, given that most of her body was still in the hypothermia-inducing creek. Then she hauled the boat back to shore, awkwardly holding it with one arm and fiercely kicking her legs, a very long, hard swim. I’ve often wondered how she survived that feat. It was a desperate act, and, I like to think, one of prescience. I like to think she risked her life for me, that she loved me that much.

  I can still see the sparkling gems of creek water dripping off the ends of her nipples, the aching red of her pale skin, the way she held her mouth as she pulled the kayak along the shore to our beach. I kept expecting her to say something about the boat’s rightful owner, or at least express concern about him, but she never did. It was ours now. It would eventually be mine.

  I ran up the hill ahead of her and built a fire in the stove. I put on a kettle and, when she came in the door, wrapped her in blankets. I rubbed her wet head with a towel and dried her feet. She was too numb to dress herself, and so I did. Then, once she warmed up, we returned to our day’s work.

  I didn’t know how Father would react to the kayak sitting on our beach. I watched for him all afternoon and caught sight of him coming out of the woods, the boys trailing a few yards behind. They had no game. Father strode right to the boat and examined it with his hands on his hips. Then he broke into a run up to the cabin, as if Mother and I were in danger. He assumed we had a visitor.

  Father entered the cabin brusquely. Mother didn’t tell him about her swim. She said the kayak had drifted to shore. He looked around suspiciously and then bolted back outside. I watched from the window, afraid that he’d shove the boat back into the current. He stood on the beach and looked at it for a long time. I wish I could guess what Father was thinking, but I never knew. Concern about the missing paddler? Paranoia about the same? Anxiety about any kind of input from the outside? Maybe he thought that keeping the boat was cheating.

  In the morning, as soon as I got up, I ran outside and saw the pretty blue vessel still tipped on our beach. That very day Father began carving a paddle, and soon he and the boys used it regularly for fishing, alongside the crude rowboat Father had built himself.

  This morning I left Gregory and Stuart in our camp on Sweet Creek. They promised, with much reluctance, to give me a full four hours lead time. I wanted to arrive alone. They tried citing last night’s snowfall and my inexperience as reasons for not allowing this. I laughed at that. My inexperience! They laughed too, admitted the irony. But the truth is, Stuart had pointed out very gently, I’d lived in San Francisco for decades now. I hadn’t slept outside since leaving Alaska. I liked nice restaurants and comfortable hotels. Stuart went so far as to point out that I wasn’t a spring chicken. I laughed some more and told them both I’d be fine.

  I am fine. The kayak I am paddling is much more comfortable than the one I made my escape in. It’s plastic, so I don’t have to worry about cracking its hull on rocks, and it’s fitted out with a padded seat and backrest. It also has a rudder I control with foot pedals, so I don’t waste lots of energy trying to stay on course. In fact, I surprise myself by feeling downright happy. The green-black trees look so familiar, as if I had been here last week. The sight of hard sunlight on glassy water jolts my heart. Even the dull pulse of working muscles feels like home.

  Though my real home now includes a small white dog named Winston, a cappuccino maker, central heating, and walls lined with art prints. It seems like months ago that I left my flat, although it was only two weeks. I flew to Fairbanks on a commercial flight, arriving two days before Gregory and Stuart. I wanted time to find the diner, if it still existed. It does. I had breakfast there both mornings. Harold is long gone. The present owner had never heard of him. On the third day, I flew with Gregory and Stuart to Fort Yukon. I braced myself, thinking the sight of that muddy sprawl of a village would kick me in the stomach. Instead, it twisted my heart. I guess the place had become a part of me. I couldn’t hate it any more than I can hate my own spleen. I walked out the mud road to find the plywood and tarpaper house where I had stayed with Ben and Susie. It was gone. Not a trace. Just dirt and grass.

  My guides rented one double and one single kayak, and we floated down the Yukon River to the mouth of what my family called Big River. There we began paddling upstream, against the current, and it took us six long, hard days to reach the beginning of Sweet Creek. We camped there at the convergence and then paddled one more day to reach last night’s camp. I’m within range now, a couple more hours. My arms and back have strengthened. The boys have shown me how to use my core, my abdomen muscles, to get more power. I am paddling upstream.

  I’ve grown quite fond of Gregory and Stuart. At first I told them only the bare bones of my story. I showed them on a map where the cabin was. I asked them to take care of all the travel details. They did try asking questions, first over single-malt scotches that first night in Fairbanks. Then, tentatively, again in our camp at the meeting of Sweet Creek and Big River. Finally, last night, I relented.

  They had surprised me by staging a celebration. They knew, even without having all the details, how important this journey was for me. As a light, early autumn snow fell, they built a big fire and seared steaks. Gregory made his signature camp cake, a gooey chocolate concoction that seemed more pudding than cake. Stuart collected edible greens, but I spat out the first bite, saying edible was a subjective term. We passed around a bottle of cabernet.

  I savored the lacy cold flakes, knowing that they didn’t threaten my life, that I was safe. The baying of wolves came to my ears like a complex, rich music. I hadn’t known that I missed their voices. The boys kept adding logs to the fire, long before it needed them.

  Both are handsome in their own ways. Gregory is a bit hobbit-like with a puggish nose and rosy cheeks. He wears a full black beard, usually adorned with bits of oatmeal or drips of hot chocolate. His hair is self-cut, black, and pelt-like. Stuart is pale with full and childish red lips. His dark blond hair curls slightly at the ends. His hands are expressive and I imagine him to be a sensitive if awkward lover. He smiles every time I meet eyes with him. Both are conciliatory and try very hard. They are fascinated by my story.

  I told them everything. About the bush pilot setting us down in the meadow, felling the trees and building our cabin, bear visitations, and even Mother’s fever. I told them how Father had said he was grateful she’d died in the spring, after the thaw, so that we were able to bury her. I told them how I couldn’t stop thinking, after he said that, about what it would have been like had she died in the winter, how we’d have had to store her body in the woodshed until the spring thaw, frozen solid, her hair breaking off and the fear in her eyes permanent. I told them about Mother’s swim. Finally, about me leaving.

  In early October of my seventeenth year, while the men were off hunting, I sat in the pebbles on our beach and stared at the blue kayak. For the millionth time I recalled the look of determination in my mother’s eyes as she watched it spin in the bottle green eddy. That day, it sat next to me, landlocked, idle, ready. The river would freeze up soon.

  A single gunshot released me. They had gotten another moose. It was the fourth that fall. They had food, f
ar more than they needed. I could go. I knew they’d be several hours bringing the moose back. I could get far in that time.

  I ran to our cabin and grabbed as much dried meat as I could carry. I stuffed it under the deck of the kayak and went back for more. I gathered up all my clothes, too, and what I didn’t wear I shoved under the deck with the meat. I dragged the boat to the water’s edge, climbed in, and launched.

  I paddled down Sweet Creek, the current speeding me along, and when I came to Big River I pushed hard down that, too. I knew I had to beat the freeze, which could come instantly, any night now. I also knew that I was most likely racing my father. I was pretty sure he’d try to come after me, but he’d be in the much slower rowboat. So I paddled by starlight, late into the nights, and slept only briefly, when I absolutely had to, lying close to the kayak and shore so I could shove off quickly if needed. I ate the meat and drank the river water. I was not unhappy.

  It took me only four days to reach the Yukon River, which I recognized by its sheer size. There was plenty of boat traffic and I waited for a vessel to come close enough for me to ask questions. I learned that Fort Yukon was about twenty-five miles upstream. But now I’d be paddling against the current. My father would be able to hitch a ride with a faster vessel and overtake me. I needed to find a hideaway for a few days, until the freeze, or until he gave up.

  After paddling for a few hours along the Yukon’s bank, I saw a plume of smoke coming out of the trees. I landed the boat and pulled it deep into the brush, well out of sight from the river. Then I hiked up a small trail to a clearing and a cabin. I knocked on the door.

  The woman who answered reminded me of Mother. She wasn’t as pretty and didn’t look as capable. But she had that hard-eyed look, suspicious and tired and resourceful all at once. A man, jaunty and wiry, came to the door behind her. His whole body smiled.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t have an answer to that question. I thought of Mother and Father. Of our cabin and the twins. I had left all that behind.

  “I need work,” I said. “For a few days.” And then I made up a name.

  The man didn’t stop grinning. Behind him, two children started crying.

  “No.” The woman spoke quickly to beat her husband’s yes. “We don’t need anything.”

  “Sure,” the man said. “Come on in.”

  “I said no,” the woman repeated, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the cabin. Three children—two, three, and five years old—sat on the rough floorboards. The five-year-old got up and ran behind his mother.

  For four days I was a nanny and all-around maid. I changed diapers and played peek-a-boo. I fried eggs and boiled coffee. I put up berries and mended clothes. I scrubbed the floor and shook out rugs. The woman hated me. Every hour I considered running back down the hill to my boat, but the prospect of being found, of being returned to the cabin on upper Sweet Creek, was an option I couldn’t face. So I slept alone and cold in a tiny outbuilding. I got up before sunrise and followed orders. The man had had much less hunting luck than my father and brothers, and he left in a foul mood every morning in search of meat for the winter. In the evenings he ricocheted between nervous energy, when he’d bounce one of the children too hard on his knee or take things apart so he could put them back together, and passive sullenness, when he’d stare at the black stove for long stretches of time, barely blinking. I scurried with the wife to please him, bringing coffee and stoking the fire and keeping the children quiet. I prayed the freeze would come so I could travel again. I would walk the remaining miles to Fort Yukon.

  On the fifth day, the man said I should come hunting with him, that he could use the help. The woman said no, that she needed me, but he tossed me a canteen and I followed him outside. We hiked for miles, the man who had been silent every night in the cabin now talking, talking, talking. I remember nothing of what he told me. I concentrated on containment, keeping myself in as small and compact a package as I could. He didn’t touch me.

  But, though I had no experience in such things, I knew he would soon.

  That night the temperature dropped and I knew the inland streams would freeze. Slush had already started forming in the Yukon. I got up hours before dawn and crept down to the shore. I dragged my blue kayak out of the brush and pushed it into the crusted water. I began paddling upstream, ice crystals tinkling against my paddle and hull. Animals had eaten the last of my meat, stored in my kayak, and I had no food.

  Yet a strange contentment came over me. I knew my father wouldn’t risk getting caught away from the cabin and my brothers at freeze-up. I knew I was free. I began to consider the man’s question, Who are you? I was a hungry girl with sore muscles. A grieving girl with nothing left of her mother but the memory of a steely gaze and a fierce swim. I was something very simple, alive, moving freely. I was a girl with boat.

  A day and a half later, weak and dizzy and raw, I arrived at the mostly native town of Fort Yukon. To avoid drawing attention to myself, I pulled my hat with earflaps down as far as I could and stayed on the outskirts. I knocked on the door of the first cabin I came to and found Susie, a Gwich’in woman. I liked how she looked, so I told her my whole story, and that I needed to get to Fairbanks. Soon her husband Ben came home. They fed me and let me sleep on the floor of their front room, wrapped in blankets. In the morning, they showed me where I was, pulling out maps and using a finger to trace the Yukon River’s two-thousand-mile route. The headwaters are in British Columbia, and from there the river travels northwest, crossing the border into Alaska. At Fort Yukon, it turns west and runs all the way to the Bering Sea. I was only about seventy-five miles north of Fairbanks, as the crow flies.

  Ben and Susie asked me lots of questions about my journey and the number of hours I had been paddling. They figured out the exact location of our cabin and knew the name of our creek. Ben, who sat on the tribal council, argued that I should return to my father and brothers. Susie said that I was an adult at seventeen and should be able to make my own choices. In the end, they paid a bush pilot to fly me to Fairbanks.

  I stayed in the big city, living in a boarding house and working at Harold’s diner until I had paid Susie and Ben back for the flight. Each week I walked to the home of the bush pilot and gave him what cash I had. He made frequent trips to Fort Yukon and he delivered the money to Ben and Susie.

  Then I kept working, saving for a plane ticket out of the state. But I didn’t leave for another couple of years. I lost the fear of my father. Even if he had found me there, he couldn’t have made me leave Fairbanks. Anyway, I met Sergey and thought about marrying him. I eventually figured out he hadn’t been thinking about marrying me, and that’s when I started saving for real. I liked what I read in the papers about San Francisco, and so when I had enough money for the ticket, I flew there and stayed.

  Having heard my story, my guides wanted more than anything to witness my return. I could see it in their eyes. They were expecting something like Into the Wild, and frankly, so was I. Bleached human bones. Decades-old tins of chili. An open journal on the kitchen table scrawled with a few last desperate words. It would be a sight. I felt bad depriving them of it. But I had to do this alone.

  So this morning they did a safety check on my kayak, more for show than anything else. They chipped out the ice cradled in the cockpit seat. They stuffed the hatches with food and warm clothes. They reviewed with me the route about six times until I laughed and pointed out that it was matter of paddling up the river, which by now was awfully narrow. It’d be difficult to get lost. They shifted their weight from one leg to the other, watched me carefully. What if I capsized, they wanted to know. What if I stopped for lunch and a brown bear approached. They pointed out that the cabin could be gone, that I might paddle right on by the site. I believe they’d grown fond of me, too. Both waded into the icy river to launch me. Sweet Stuart actually kissed me on the cheek.

  “We’ll see you in a few hours,” Gregory said. “You hav
e your radio?”

  “I do.” I tried to smile for their sake.

  I didn’t look back, just dug in the paddle and pushed aside the first load of water. Paddling upstream is hard work, but the boys have taught me to stay near the shore where there is often a countercurrent. Up here, the danger of bears is minimal, as long as I stay in my boat. They tell me it can be bad in more touristy areas, like Glacier Bay, where the brown bear have come to learn that kayaks mean human food. They tell stories of massive cinnamon-colored grizzlies swimming behind their boats, hoping to tip them and harvest the dried apricots and salami logs. Up here, as long as I stay on the water, I should be fine.

  In any case, I don’t intend to stop. The river’s flow this late in the season is weak. I will be there in no time. A light snow, like last night’s, fell for the first hour. But then the clouds flew west and the sky opened up blue.

  As I draw close, I try to prepare myself for the possibilities. Maybe my brothers had found bush wives. For all I know, they’d sent for mail-order brides. I might find a thriving little community. The boys would be well into middle age. They might have grandchildren running around the little inlet. The one cabin might have blossomed into fifteen cabins.

  On the other hand, the winter following the October I left was a particularly hard one. Breakup came very late that spring. In spite of having four moose, they could have all perished. Wolves could have gotten the meat or it could have rotted. A bear attack. Poisonous berries. Anything could have killed them. Bones, picked clean by scavengers, scattered about a rotting cabin.

  I am paddling upstream, alone. Once again, a girl with boat. I am returning for the first time since I left when I was seventeen years old. I am not unhappy. The fireweed stalks are hot pink against the hard blue sky. Glaciated peaks soften the horizon in the far distance. I’m finding the paddling easier, despite my age, than it ever was then. Perhaps that’s my willingness. I am, I realize, even eager.