by Hunt, Jack
For miles, she battled her way back to civilization. As long as she stayed upright, she was content to wrestle with the river, but that all changed fast as they hit the last segment of rapids. They were almost out, maybe a mile or two longer and they would be in calm, flat waters barreling their way toward Chickaloon located at Mile 76 of the Glenn Highway.
Hours upon hours, the rough waters had worn her down mentally and physically. Nothing but endless obstacles, but nothing could have prepared her for the likes of this one.
It was a strainer.
This natural obstruction was found on the outside curve of the river as it snaked downstream. On bends, the current ate away at the shore and exposed tree roots, which caused entire trees to fall into the water. This one was mostly submerged, hidden from view by huge sloshing waves. In an attempt to avoid boulders on the inside of the curve, Kara had unwittingly navigated the canoe right into the path of the strainer. Had she seen it in time maybe she would have had a chance to swing around it, but it was too late.
The front end vanished, along with her father into the whitewater, and she felt the jolt as the canoe collided and corkscrewed them. Caught in the branches, flipped on its side, the combined force of the river and strainer took them down.
She gasped.
All the while, the river continued to rage, its strong current punishing and pushing against them, making it almost impossible to escape. The sudden shock of water made her father come to life as Kara used one of the tree limbs to pull herself out and get to him. He was secured in by a spray skirt.
In that moment he was one with the canoe. A huge swell of water rose behind them and forced the canoe forward into a tighter spot, strangling it with branches and preventing any hope of getting it free.
All she could do was get him out and hope to God that she could reach the bank.
Kara unattached the grab loop at the front of the skirt and the rest was straightforward. Her greatest challenge was trying not to be swept away or pulled down by the undertow. It pummeled her back violently as she got around him and pulled him out, holding him the way a rescue swimmer would keep a person’s head above water.
But the river was too strong.
There was no hope of reaching the bank.
Like being sucked backward through a tube, the two of them were instantly swept downstream. The only thing holding them together was her arm around him, and the rope she’d tied to her waist and his. It was there for exactly this. A moment she thought she would have experienced hours ago, not in the last leg.
Being back in the water, under the same conditions but an even stronger current than the night her mother died, gripped her with fear and panic. She knew there was only maybe a mile of rapids left but it might as well have been ten. With no canoe or paddle to guide them around hazards, they were now at the mercy of the river.
Whether it would swallow them and never release their bodies again, or spit them out with a stern warning, only time could tell.
The crash of water was deafening.
But worse was the cold.
The terror was akin to being dropped into the deepest, darkest, coldest ocean and left to tread water while sharks circled them. It was that sense of losing control, having no hope they would survive.
This was it.
This was how she would go.
Her eyes scanned the banks. No black blur. No wolf. Nothing to save them.
Just endless trees, rock, and churning waters. Her back slammed into a boulder and they pinballed off it down a chute. Hauling back on her father to get her feet higher than her butt and avoid getting dragged down, she yelled, “Dad, move your leg up.” But he was unresponsive, or couldn’t hear her.
At some point, she lost consciousness, her body no longer able to withstand the brutality of the Alaskan temperatures.
Sky.
Air.
Light.
None of it made sense.
Was she dead or alive?
And then just like that, it was over.
Kara felt a tugging at her shoulder, then a gentle nudge of something moist and her eyes widened to see the black wolf. Its amber eyes burning into hers. Was it real? A hallucination? Mom? When she shut them and blinked again it was gone, replaced by a steep gravel slope slicing up through a grove of trees.
Facedown, she coughed hard, expelling water.
She was on land.
Voices above and beyond echoed.
A family? A mother calling her kids together.
A rumble of a vehicle’s engine.
“Sam, hurry up taking those photos. We gotta go.”
“I’ll be right there,” a young boy said. She couldn’t see them, only hear.
Move. Move. Move! Words imprinted on her mind, like a drum beating, over and over. Its rhythm sounded like her mother’s voice, urging her to get up.
Mom? Kara thought, her eyes closing, exhaustion, cold, and pain swirling together.
Move, Kara.
MOVE! Louder this time.
Was it her voice or Kara’s?
As if imbued with a surge of untapped strength, Kara lifted her face toward the heavens, eyelids blinking fast, a trembling hand stretching out, broken fingers clawing at the jagged rock. She dug deep, struggling to rise only to fall.
Gasping, struggling, every inhale felt like she was swallowing razors.
How long had she been lying there, the world spinning around, traffic passing by?
“Sammy. Come on, time to go.”
“Just a minute.”
“No now, we have to get going!”
Kara groped the ground before her, her hands sliced, bruised, a fingernail torn, a knucklebone exposed. Every attempt to breathe was harder than the last.
Had a lung collapsed?
Voices again, higher above, nearby.
Her mind informed, connected, desperate to make sense.
She was alive.
“I’ll get him,” an older boy cried out, sounding frustrated.
A moment passed as Kara cast a glance back and saw her father lying face down on the rocks, still attached by rope, his lower legs in the water, the rest on land. “Dad.” The words spilled out but sounded muted as if she had a mouthful of sand.
“Ray. You got to see this. It’s a wolf.”
A wolf? The thought passed through her mind.
Move. Move. Move!
The voices were close, even near now. Her left eye was swollen, practically closed, the taste of iron filled her mouth as she struggled to get up, each time falling forward. Please, help.
Above, higher up the slope.
“See, look. I told you.”
“I don’t see anything,” an older boy’s voice said.
“No, it’s there.”
“Come on twerp, it’s getting cold.”
The older boy sounded annoyed as if he was tired of the younger one.
“But it was there, Ray. I’m not lying.”
Kara continued to claw forward until she felt the tug of the rope. She struggled to untie it but her fingers were numb.
“Mom, he’s not listening.”
“Sammy, would you get over here now!”
That sound, unmistakable, a mother juggling life, kids, commitments.
“All right. I’m coming,” the young boy said.
Footsteps moved away.
No. Come back. Come back.
She struggled to find the strength to speak.
Something was broken, her left arm felt like it wouldn’t work.
The whistle. Again the voice, it was like she could hear her mother telling her what to do. A few seconds to comprehend and Kara stuck her frozen hand into her pocket and fished it out. The Leatherman. Pulling it wide, she reached in and withdrew the whistle then placed it between her lips and blew. At first, there was hardly anything but a breathy squeal. Again she tried, this time louder. Feet walking away stopped.
“Did you hear something?” the young boy said.
“Sammy.
Let’s go, mom’s waiting.”
“I thought I…”
His voice returning.
Again Kara blew the whistle.
“Get off me. I heard something.”
“Come on guys. Hurry up!” a female voice bellowed.
“Mom, he won’t listen.”
More footsteps leading away. Gravel spitting. One final time she blew it, this time as hard and as long as she could exhale air from her lungs.
She waited. Hanging on bated breath, her breathing getting more difficult.
Please. Please. Her eyes rolled back in her skull. Tears streaked her face as her cheek dropped to the gravel. She was done.
A second or two, the sound of running, then a sense of someone watching.
“Mom, MOM!” a boy cried out from above.
Kara managed to lift her eyes for a brief few seconds to see a blond boy, no older than eight, pointing down.
A second later, more faces appeared over the guard rail. An older boy, a younger girl. A mother rushed into view, brunette, a baby in her arms. She looked down, blurring in Kara’s vision only to crystalize. “Dear Lord. Ray, take the baby back to the van. Get me my phone.”
Seconds.
Minutes.
Hours.
It could have been days
She drifted in and out of consciousness.
“Hello, hello, I need an ambulance, a helicopter, police, there is a woman, and…”
The world around Kara shifted, sounds and images, a flurry of activity, no sense of time. A steady thump. Strobe lights, sirens. Wind flapping. Confusion and clarity morphing together, like a dream unfolding.
“Over here. She’s over here!” a woman cried.
A cold breeze stung her skin. Pounding boots, crumbling gravel, someone nearby. Her body rolled. “Ma’am, can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?” Fingers prodding, lifting her skin. A light shining in her eyes. A crinkling. A blanket. Reassuring words. More yelling. Medical terminology. Her mind spun, desperate to decipher the jumbled fragments of reality.
It came at her, too fast, too loud.
She mumbled, words incomprehensible.
A medic shouted. “The stretcher.”
“There’s another one over there,” someone cried from farther away.
A strap then a mask placed over her mouth and nose, air blowing in.
“Ma’am, it’s going to be okay. We are taking you to the hospital.”
Her body was shifted, then she felt bands crossing over her chest and legs.
“And lift!”
Incomprehensible voices as she moved in and out of reality.
Moving, faster, faster, her body jostled as a downwind whipped at her face and clothes, cooling her body, its power hard and relentless, then it was gone.
Her eyes blinked, the last rays of light stabbing her pupils, the smell of fumes, a whining noise, a loud thumping, then a sensation of being weightless.
Like drifting on a cloud.
A gentle hand touched her shoulder. “Ma’am, we got you. It’s going to be okay.”
A cramped space, people around her, then she remembered.
“My...” Kara’s voice trailed off, nothing but an exhale.
An ear of a medic came close. “What was that?”
“Father,” she whispered.
“Did you catch that?” the medic asked.
“Ma’am?”
She repeated herself.
“My… father.” It came out feathery and light.
“I think she said, father.”
“He’s here.”
Then a familiar voice replied, practically a croak. “Kara.”
Her father. A cold, water-wrinkled hand touched hers, and she released her remaining energy in a tear as it trickled out the corner of her eye. Relief washed over her like a wave of an ocean, ushering her back to the safety of the shore.
Epilogue
Five weeks later
Anchorage, Alaska
The taxi pulled up outside Shaw’s Flightseeing Tours and Air Charters. Kara thumbed a tip off and thanked the driver as she climbed out, left arm in a sling. She breathed in the crisp November air. Above, a cloudless blue sky stretched into the distance, giving her a clear view of the mountains. Puffs of hot breath expelled from her mouth, appearing like ghostly apparitions as she adjusted her gray beanie, tucked her right hand into a pocket of her black down jacket, and made her way over to the office beside the huge steel hangar.
Inside were three Cessna 206s and a de Havilland Beaver similar to the one they’d crashed in. A mechanic tinkering on one of the engines turned and glanced her way for a second before resuming as another guy walked by and pointed something out. Seeing a new face in charge of the inspections on planes was strange. For as long as she could remember, the director of maintenance and operations was Frank. He’d always been the one in overalls, covered in oil and grease. He liked it that way. While they employed another mechanic, he was never one to shy away from getting his hands dirty. So, it came as no surprise to discover the cause of their crash.
A loosened oil line fitting.
She wasn’t sure about the specific details of whether or not it had been tampered with, only that when the authorities from the NTSB investigated the cause they found it to be suspicious. Whether Frank or Paul or Callaway was responsible, that would forever remain a mystery because, by the time a search-and-rescue helicopter reached the cabin, they found Frank dead, not from the injury of the bear trap but a single bullet wound from the .22 rifle. The rumor mill might have stewed with talk of depression, or a hit from those that knew about his debt, but she knew the truth. He couldn’t face the music knowing what he’d done. The thought that they would tell the police of his attempted murder, the strain debt had him under and his involvement with Callaway had driven him over the edge.
The decision to pull the trigger couldn’t have been easy.
There were years of history, good history, he had a family, older, but people who cared nonetheless. However, by the sounds of what he’d shared in their time out there in those mountains, she had concluded that it might have eventually happened anyway.
Blame could destroy a person, and lead them to do all manner of harm to others.
While they had provided state troopers with the location of the bear attack and the river, the bodies of Hugh Callaway and Paul Ross were not found, and after multiple trips by SAR, the weather worsened, and eventually, searches were called off.
They, like many others, were now part of Alaskan backcountry history, another tragedy, a cautionary tale of what not to do.
In the early days following their return, the media hounded her, looking for a soundbite, an interview, anything they could use to understand the harrowing event and how they’d survived. She still couldn’t recollect those final minutes or how she wound up on the shore, or the sightings of the wolf, nor would she tell anyone for fear that they would think she was mad.
Kara did her best to answer questions once she was released from the hospital, while her father stayed in longer to be monitored after suffering from pneumonia. She remained in Anchorage until he was stable, and doctors had given him the all-clear. Although she wanted to remain longer, she had to return to California to take care of her affairs.
Debbie Ratchet, her father’s neighbor, was more than happy to check in on him while she was away, despite his initial protesting. Rumor had it her multiple homemade blueberry pies were quite a hit at the hospital.
Her father’s back was turned when she entered.
He wore a thick military-green expedition parka with a fur ruff hood and loose khaki pants. He was chatting with the new operations manager. His head whipped around and a smile formed.
“Kara?” her father asked, a hint of surprise.
“Hey, Dad,” she hugged him and stepped back to get a better look at him, holding on to one of his arms. “How’s the leg?”
He looked well, refreshed, still sporting some gnarly bruises and sev
eral stitched cuts that were healing up like hers, but overall on the mend. He wore a thick black brace on his right leg and held a walking stick in his right hand.
“Oh, never better. The doctor said I should take it easy.”
Her brow lifted. “And by that, you thought that meant going into work?”
Rachel, the customer service manager, a brunette standing behind the counter, chimed in. “Oh, he’s not working, Kara. Trust me on that. We won’t let him.”
“Thank you, Rachel,” Henry said.
“Always a pleasure,” she replied with a wink at Kara as she dipped her head and returned to pecking at her keyboard. They stepped out of the office, her father slow, hobbling but moving better than expected. It was a good sign, as was his optimistic tone.
“How’s the arm?”
“On the mend.”
“So I thought you’d be in California?”
“I told you I was coming back.”
He lifted a finger. “Yeah, you probably did. I must check the fridge more often.”
“Or get a better system.”
“How about you remind me why?”
“To see you about a job.”
He smiled. “A job? Here?”
“Where else? I imagine you need someone to help with the day to day running of the business. We can’t have you hobbling down here every day. I could do advertising. I’m not bad. And I figure you could use a hand around the house as we can’t have you burning any more breakfasts. Of course, I could always ask Debbie to help from time to time.”
He shook his head. “Oh, God no. If I see another blueberry pie it will be too soon.”
She laughed as they watched a plane come in for landing.
“You ever thought about learning to fly?”
“You ever thought of asking Debbie out?”
He snorted. “No, I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Me. Debbie? C’mon.”
“She gives you pies.”
“She gives me headaches. No, would you like to learn to fly? We could use more pilots.”
“Ah, I don’t know.”
