by Roger Wall
“Might be a little rough,” I said and pushed the canoe into the bay, tipping it as I stepped inside. The motion set the stranger off balance and made him call out and shift his weight to compensate. There, I thought, he’s scared.
“It’d be better if we were walking,” he said.
“This is the fastest way.”
The wind created pressure on the sail, and I could feel the stress through the rudder and the mainsheet line, which dug into my hand as we tacked across the bay. Under the low clouds the water was black, appearing deeper, more difficult to read, than it was on a sunny day. Spray broke over the bow and hit the stranger’s face, which made him twitch and risk letting go of the gunwales to wipe his eyes. Coming about, the canoe almost stalled. As chop hit the hull and wind thrashed the sail, I saw that I would have to bring greater momentum in to change directions.
I ran out the last tack across the bay and sailed into the open waters of Lake Sakakawea. Wind buffeted the canoe. We rode up and down swells. Gusts slapped small, sharp waves over the gunwales and forced me to spill wind from the sail. The shock of the water soaking his lap made the stranger gasp and rise up. I shouted for him to sit down. There was too much to pay attention to, the force of the wind, the size and timing of the swells, the balance of the canoe. Rather than coming about and zigzagging down lake, I held the tack and headed toward a point of land in the shadow of a huge cement bridge abutment from which terns and gulls scouted the lake.
I passed close to shore but didn’t stop. The stranger, no longer capable of suppressing a spasm, vomited into the lake.
“It’s those waves. If it were calm, I’d be fine,” he said, turning and looking under the sail to make eye contact with me.
“No, it’s the germs,” I said, not looking at him but straight ahead at the swells.
“It’s the waves. If we were walking, I’d be okay.”
“River water, you never know what’s in it.”
I hoped that reminding the stranger of his illness and the roughness of the water would keep his stomach upset. It would take too much time to go ashore and boil the nightshade or convince him that the raw leaves would cure his ills. Anyway, the bridge spanned the lake, which would make it easy for him to find his way among the deserted farm roads or the unused train line back to White Earth River. I didn’t want to leave him yet, either, in these sailing conditions; in the rough water I felt safer with him in the canoe, if his only value was ballast against the waves.
The sail slackened as the canoe nosed into the leeward shadow of the bridge. The lake narrowed. Broad plateaus extended to the north and south, and their bluffs absorbed the wind, causing it to blow unevenly through this cut in the earth. I dropped the sail and let us drift. My hand had become numb from the wrap of the mainsheet line around my palm; my arm, stiff from serving as a rigid extension of the tiller. I dug sunflower seeds from my pocket and chewed them into a mash. The rigging squeaked. The canoe turned sideways, then around. I massaged the circulation back into my hand.
“We almost to the Center?” the stranger asked.
He leaned forward. I thought he would vomit again, but he seemed to be looking down into the water.
“You see a fish?” I asked.
“A big shape passed.”
“A pike, a paddlefish, maybe.”
“It was dark. Like a shadow.”
It was too overcast for shadows, but I didn’t correct the stranger.
“We have just a little farther to go,” I said and took up the paddle.
“Maybe they can help you find your father. At the clinic.”
“They might arrest me.”
“Maybe because you’re helping me they won’t. We can stay with my uncle. He won’t be happy about it, but he’ll come around. What’d your father do?”
“You mean work?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure. I was a baby when he disappeared.”
“Well, he had to have done something.”
Otis had never said what my parents did before coming to White Earth River. I couldn’t imagine them living in the Center, but the stranger’s suggestion made me consider this.
The slow rhythm of dipping the paddle blade into the water and pulling was a relief after the tension and speed of being blown over the water. I could’ve paddled for the rest of the afternoon. We passed finger-shaped coves pointing deep inland. Could I have abandoned the stranger in one of these? We had come far enough that it would be unlikely for him to be able to find his way back to White Earth River. But I didn’t like the thought of being enclosed, trapped in a narrow channel, and sitting out the afternoon with the stranger until the nightshade put him to sleep. I wanted to arrive on a wide beach at the end of the day, make a fire, boil some tea, and then slip away and drift until daylight.
When the lake widened again, it seemed as though we had entered an ocean, although from Otis’s geography lessons I knew that this wasn’t possible. Still, I dipped my hand in the cool water and licked my fingers to make sure the water wasn’t salty.
Waves seemed to grow out of the lake, rise up into little hills, and then spill forth their white foam. The waves never flattened or disappeared but continued to reappear, again and again, in the same place. In the distance were short, gray bluffs, perhaps the end of the lake. Surely I could reach them by dusk.
I fought the plastic tiller to steer the canoe in quartering movements into the waves and spilled wind from the sail to control our speed. The sudden ascent up the slope of a wave followed by dropping down into the trough scared me, and I ordered the stranger to turn face down and to push against the front thwart to stabilize the canoe. He cried out as he threw himself toward the bow when we crashed over a swell. The wound in his stomach had opened up again.
The gusts bent the carbon fiber mast and snapped the boom up and down against its line. The monotony of steering, cresting through the white foam, and aligning the craft to take on the next wave began to tire and dull me. I shuffled my weight more slowly from side to side and leaned over the gunwale recklessly as I tried to balance the boat. We seemed to be suspended in the lake, unmoving, despite the bluffs on the horizon appearing to become larger and closer.
As we entered the middle of this endless sea, the tiller bent at its attachment point with the rudder. The tiller wasn’t designed to sail in high wind. It was intended for a morning of fun on flat water on a calm day. As the tiller bent and then snapped, I lost the ability to steer and couldn’t prevent the canoe from turning downwind. I felt myself giving up, surrendering to the forces of the lake. I was exhausted. What more could I do than let out the main sheet and hope we could survive the run toward whichever shore the wind chose for us?
I felt a rush of cool water sweep over my back and fill the canoe. The stranger jerked and cried out when the cold water hit him. I gripped the broken tiller and let go of the main sheet. The stranger caught the boom as it whipped past him. “Don’t!” I shouted too late. The wind caught the sail, the canoe drifted broadside, and a swell, like a gentle hand coming from below, rolled us silently into the lake. The mast fell like a leafless sapling, and the surface of the lake absorbed the sail without a sound.
At first we didn’t speak. I treaded water beside the canoe, bobbing up and down with the swells, letting cool water wash over my face and into my parched mouth. The flapping sail was finally quiet, which calmed me. It wasn’t so bad, being in the water. At least the battle with the wind was over.
The stranger was in a blue life vest zipped to the chin yet he thrashed and gasped at the shock of being dumped into the lake. I grabbed a paddle floating nearby and wedged it under the yellow rope, which still secured our packs to the thwarts. The water bladder had come loose and floated on the surface like a dead fish. I tucked that under a strand of the yellow rope as well.
I remembered the words of the “Safe Boating” booklet: “When in trouble, stay with your craft until help arrives.” “Stay with the boat,” I shouted to the strang
er but not the rest, because I knew that no one was going to save us, that we had to rescue ourselves. The stranger continued to thrash but didn’t move any closer to the boat. I clutched the gunwale of the half-submerged canoe and kicked my feet to tread water.
“You’re wearing yourself out. Get to the boat,” I shouted.
“I can’t swim.”
“Paddle with your hands toward the boat. Like this.”
I demonstrated the stroke.
“I’m sinking.”
“Don’t struggle. Let the life vest keep you up. Paddle toward me with your hands.”
“It’s pulling me down, com. The vest. It’s heavy.”
The stranger beat his arms through the water, but his body didn’t rise up. A swell washed over his head. He spit out water and coughed.
“Take it off! Now!” I screamed over the wind.
The stranger held his breath and unzipped the vest, dipping below the surface as he struggled to pull his arms free. He rose, flailing against the surface of the water and coughing. The life vest drifted downward like a giant blue fish diving for prey. A moment later it was gone. The vest seemed to have been filled with lead sinkers; perhaps it was too old to work.
“Paddle back to me. Use your hands. Now!” I shouted.
“I can’t.” His voice was weak.
“Yes, you can. Watch me.”
I let go of the canoe to show him, but a swell lifted me up and I grabbed onto the canoe again. The stranger floated down the slope of the wave as he worked his arms in circles, propelling himself upward but not toward the canoe.
“Wait! I’ll throw you a line.”
I untangled the loose ends of the yellow rope from the thwart and tossed it to the stranger. It fell short.
“Damn! I’ll push the canoe toward you!”
I pulled myself hand-over-hand along the gunwale until I was at the stern. I tried to frog kick the boat forward, but the drag of the sail acted as an anchor. I waited for a swell, to time my kicks with the push of the wave, but the froth washed over me and the canoe didn’t move any closer to the stranger.
A swell now separated us, and I could see the stranger only when the peak of a wave raised him up.
“Com! Com!” I shouted the only name I knew for the stranger. “I’m swimming to you.”
Energy surged through my body, and I plowed through a trough and up the slope of a swell and down its backside to within a couple arms’ lengths of the stranger. His head dipped below the surface and then bobbed up again as he worked his arms.
“I’m sinking, com.”
“No, take my hand!”
I extended one hand and treaded water with the other. The stranger grabbed onto my forearm with both hands and dragged me toward him, pulling me under the water. I shook loose from his grasp and kicked him away. He floated up as a wave rushed over him.
“Don’t fight! Let me tow you!”
The stranger dropped below the surface and rose coughing before he slipped down again. I grabbed his right hand. He was heavy but didn’t struggle. I waited for a whitecap to pass and then started to swim toward the canoe. When I reached the mast, I stopped and crimped his hand around the pole. He let out a weak cough and drifted below the surface. A swell passed over him, and his hand slipped into the water.
“Hold on!”
I squeezed his hand around the mast again and treaded water behind him. I forced his other hand to the mast and covered both of his hands with mine. Pressed tight against the stranger’s back, I couldn’t tread water. I tried to maneuver my body so I could, but in every position my legs became entangled with the stranger’s legs. If I hung there, behind him, my hands pressing down on his, I would start to sink, too. I couldn’t keep holding my breath. If I could loop the yellow rope around him . . .
“Keep holding on. I’m right beside you,” I said.
I let go of the stranger’s hands. A swell raised us up, and his hands slipped from the mast. He seemed to drop down a hole. His fingers, still bent in an open clasp, were the last to disappear. I probed the cool water with my feet, reached down and searched for him with my hands, and then I dove. One stroke, two strokes—all around the water was cold. I opened my eyes but saw nothing, only darkness. I resurfaced, gasping for air, and then dove again. And then again. And then once more. Then I gave up. The stranger was gone. I had tried to save him. The currents of the Missouri flowing through the lake had taken him. But they didn’t take me. Something had protected me. This is why I lived and the stranger died.
My knife hadn’t slid out of its sheath when we capsized, and I hacked at the rigging and pulled the mast and boom free. The canoe righted itself. I watched the mast and its triangle of white cloth drift over a swell and float out of sight. I tried using the inner tube to bail out the canoe, but for every bladder of water I emptied, another wave deposited twice as much. I tried to swim the swamped canoe up waves and down into troughs, frog kicking, arms stretched out from the stern. The prow acted as a small sail and helped me along. Cold crept into my body. My muscles cramped. I rested, a hand hanging on to each gunwale, and floated.
A dark cloud hung below layers of gray. I hoped I would drift to shore before the sky let loose with lightning and rain. I tightened my grip on the canoe and let the cool water of Lake Sakakawea wash over me. My body rose and fell with the swells; my chest bumped against the useless rudder. I began to kick again when the drizzle started.
PART IV:
PARSHALL BAY (ALONE)
The wind pushed the canoe toward a spit of sand. When my feet touched the silty bottom, a wave of silent relief flowed through my body. What a surprise, what a gift. At first I couldn’t believe it. I waded to shore, and a swell nudged the water-filled canoe forward. It was too heavy, filled with water, to tow above the high-water line, but I feared that left alone, it would drift away.
I had survived, that’s all that mattered. Even though I didn’t know where I was or how I’d get home—or even to mainland—the little island was a better place than where I had been. I said a prayer of thanks. Surely Otis had been watching me and urging the spirit world to protect me.
I rocked the canoe back and forth to dump its watery contents back into the lake and then hauled it up the shore. The stranger’s pack was still tied to a thwart next to mine. He hadn’t had many belongings: the two mason’s hammers, a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and a plastic water bottle. I didn’t want to be reminded of him and so slung the pack into the lake. The weight of his mason’s hammers sunk it.
I walked to the top of the spit. The distance to the mainland wasn’t far. In fair weather it would have been an easy sail or a long paddle. Although I didn’t look forward to setting out again, the thought that I could make it to shore gave me hope and let me ignore my exhaustion.
The wind caught the bow, now no longer weighted down by the stranger, and pushed the canoe off course. I tried to fight this, but my enthusiasm and energy drained away to weariness. My strokes became sloppy. The paddle knocked against the hull, and my knuckles banged on the gunwale. I let the slope of one swell push me part of the way up the next before I tried to paddle over the top.
I was confined once again to a world of swells, with little sense of escaping them. It was a mistake not to have spent the night on the spit, what now seemed to have been my last chance for land, although a small bit of it. Then, in the next moment, as though a sheet had parted, an inlet appeared. The shore was not far. I was delivered. My spirits lightened. I paddled harder.
Within the protection of the bay, the wind died down and the swells flattened. The sound of my paddle dipping into the water and hitting the hull filled the air. Grasslands stretched to the north and forests and fields spread to the south. I had returned to a seemingly familiar world.
I paddled toward what looked like a cluster of bare white tree trunks, half-fallen and leaning into the water, as though the roots had become waterlogged and caused them to topple over and die. As I came closer, though, I saw that these were
n’t trees but the masts of sailboats tilting skyward. The boats had been left behind and settled into the silty bottom of the lake as the water level had fallen. Tethers of rotting rope connected the boats to a beached dock. A long wooden walkway snaked through grass and cottonwood saplings to a cement boat ramp and landing and, farther up the shore, to a low cement block building. When the canoe scraped against bottom, I stepped into the cool shallows and towed the boat up onto the shore.
I was sure no one lived here. The brightwork on the sailboats had corroded. Sun had beat down on the hulls and decks and dulled the white plastic. The trim had weathered, too, its varnish having peeled years ago, leaving the wood gray and cracked. Only the halyard cables, vibrating against the aluminum masts in a type of song, suggested life.
I didn’t want to stay on the beach in the cool rain. It was almost dark. I needed shelter, a place where I could make a fire and dry out. The windowless cement block building turned out to be a boathouse, but at that point I had had my fill of boathouses and would have rather slept outside in the rain than in this dark, cold building.
I followed a path through a grove of tall, evenly spaced cottonwoods whose canopy shaded out any trace of an understory. As I walked over the damp soil, the leaves overhead trembled. The sound, rather than comforting me as it usually did, seemed to warn me to rush through these woods as quickly as possible. I crossed an asphalt road and headed up a street lined with pines and elms, trees that I had never seen growing together. Midway up the hill on my right, a crushed stone path disappeared between two rows of tightly spaced junipers. This seemed to be a secret passageway of sorts, perhaps one that led to a safe place.
The path ended in a clearing before an abandoned single-story house. Vegetation had taken over the house. A mat of dark-green leaves with yellow borders had crawled up the walls and onto the flat roof of the house. A row of shrubs with small, shiny green leaves and orange berries blocked the high, wide windows just below the roof. On each side of the door were short trees with crooked trunks and branches that had grown into each other. Dried pink flowers lingered on the tips of their stems. The roots of a large tree, with bark in strips, had caused the flat stone entrance path to heave and break apart. I couldn’t identify any of this vegetation, and its disorder troubled me.
