The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  “Is he okay?” Gail asked, concerned.

  “He was looking at a bunch of stitches, and it was a nasty gash, but he should be fine. We wrapped it up pretty good. Truth is they were more worried about you. And Jim was pissed at himself for ruining Peter’s trip. But we told ‘em we were happy to stay behind and let you know what happened.”

  “Sorry if we held you up,” Gail said.

  Deke waved off her concern. “Fishing’s good here. Truth is neither of us knows much about the woods. I think we got in a little over our heads.”

  “Jim said there were even bears,” Terry said.

  Gail smiled, “It’s Montana …”

  “They were going to let us tag along for a day or two, show us a few things about the river. Now …” He manufactured a look of anxiety.

  “You can come with us if you like … that’d be okay, wouldn’t it, Tom?”

  “I don’t want to seem ungrateful to you boys, but I was kind of looking forward to some time alone with my family.”

  “I understand,” Deke said, looking hurt, nevertheless.

  Gail bit her lip and shuffled her feet, embarrassed.

  “I thought that was the point of the trip,’’ Tom persisted. “You know. You’re with friends by night, but on your own by day. I liked the sound of that.”

  Gail was torn. “I appreciate your wanting to do that, honey, but after what they did for Peter and Jim. Remember Clausewitz’s first dictum about war: no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”—she gestured to Deke and Terry—“not that you folks are the enemy, but you know what I mean. You gotta go with the flow. Especially when you’re on the river.”

  Tom eyed Deke, then Terry. He didn’t like the set-up, but he didn’t want to sound uncharitable. He glimpsed Roarke at the water’s edge, staring at him—wondering if another family fight was in the offing. Tom offered a concessionary smile. “Why not. Incompetence loves company.”

  Gail made a conciliatory gesture. “Guess we’ll make camp then and head out in the morning. We are never going to hear the end of this from Peter.”

  Deke said, “Let me help you with your gear.”

  He lifted the cooler from the raft and headed for the camp site. Terry grabbed a couple of waterproof duffels. ”These go up, too?”

  “Yes, thanks,” Gail said. “Just leave them by the fire pit. I’ll figure out where I want to pitch the tent.”

  Gail watched them until they were out of earshot. “What’s the matter with you?!” she hissed at Tom.

  “They’re strangers! That’s what’s the matter with me. I thought this was our vacation?”

  “What are we supposed to do? Of course we help them. It’s the way of the river.”

  “Gail, you don’t know a goddamn thing about those guys! Or what they do. They could be republicans.”

  “Oh please … just try to have a little fun, okay? Try. You were doing great.”

  “Were is right. Know why? Because is is. As in, is they strangers … or is they not? Yes, they is!” Tom gave her a look perfected over months of disharmony, the don’t-say-I-didn’t-tell-you-so look. He marched off, upstream, muttering to himself.

  ** ** **

  Gail and Tom sat across from Deke and Terry—a blazing campfire between them, enveloped in a larger sphere of canyon darkness. The tiny beam of Roarke’s headlamp was visible at the water’s edge. He was cleaning dishes, assisted by Maggie, who peered at the dark water as if hypnotized. After a day of rowing and fishing and sun, Gail relished sitting and staring at a campfire. It was a primitive pleasure, connecting those in its glow all the way back to early man. Besides eating, it was one of the few continuous, shared ingredients linking modern times with cave dwellers. Staring at a campfire always did that for Gail … and for others, too, she realized, after watching it work its magic on dozens of clients on dozens of floats. It made you reflective. Made you consider your place in the scheme of things. Cajoled you into thinking from whence you came, and wondering where you were going. Beside the natural beauty of the landscape and the physical activities related to rowing and fishing, Gail loved the introspection that came with the territory. The spiritual involvement was as natural as the physical—a blended concoction she found intoxicating. It’s why silence around a campfire was as savored as conversation, and conversation was welcomed in haphazard bursts.

  “Jim told us you used to work the river for an outfitter,” Deke said, puncturing one of those stretches of fire-crackling silence.

  “A long time ago,” Gail said. “Before I had to get serious and get a real job. Husband. Kid. The full catastrophe! ” She laughed and placed her hand in Tom’s. “Funny … everything in your life changes, but this place always stays the same.”

  She knocked her knuckles on a piece of firewood before tossing it on the fire. It landed in a small explosion of sparks. “At least, I hope it will. That’s why I like it so much. Gets me back to basics.”

  “Too bad about Peter,” Terry offered.

  “I thought it was Jim who got cut?” Tom said.

  “Did I say Peter?” Terry touched a finger to his temple as if to say, I must be losing it.

  “You did,” Tom said. His words kind of hung there, a little edge to them. “What do you guys do?”

  “I’m sort of in between jobs,” Deke said. “The economy being what it is, you know. Terry here—”

  Tom interrupted him: “Why doesn’t Terry tell us?”

  “Not too much to tell,” Terry said, suddenly a little self-conscious. “My folks were in the restaurant business. I move around a bit, waiting, managing, bartending … short order cooking … whatever I can find … a lot of seasonal jobs.”

  Tom looked at Deke and noticed he kind of tensed whenever Terry spoke. “How far you figure they had to go to row out? … Jim and Peter?”

  “Good fifty miles,” Gail said.

  “How long would that take?” Deke asked.

  “Depends how fast you row. Sixteen hours, maybe, if you rowed straight on through.”

  “Hell of a long day,” Tom said.

  “At least it’s downstream,” Gail said. “You can make progress even when you’re resting.”

  “How many days you folks taking?” Deke asked.

  “I’d take a month, if I had my way,” Gail said. “But I’ll settle for three more nights.” She squeezed Tom’s hand playfully. “Right, honey?”

  “I’m more with Terry and my fellow architect Mies van der Rohe,” Tom said, “Less is more.”

  Roarke emerged out of the darkness carrying a stack of dented aluminum dinner plates, some kindling, and the newspaper—now dried out—tucked under his arm.

  Terry glimpsed his and Deke’s mug shots on the front page. His face tensed. He nudged Deke and nodded toward the paper. Deke immediately sat up straight, eyes wide with alarm. Terry’s hand crept toward the knife strapped to his shin … just in case.

  “Roarke,” Deke said, “can I take a look at the paper?”

  “Sure.”

  He handed the paper to Deke and dropped the pile of kindling beside the fire pit. He sunk to his knees. “Okay to stoke the fire, Mom?”

  “Yup, last call honey, before lights out.”

  Deke unfolded the paper and stared at his own image.

  “Doubt you’ll find anything interesting,” Tom said. “Just the local rag. Yesterday’s news to boot.”

  Deke calmly scanned the story for any actionable information. Terry leaned in for a glimpse. Deke crumpled the front page and tossed it into the fire. For a moment, his and Terry’s wrinkled faces stared up from the coals.

  “I don’t know about everybody else,” Gail said, stretching, “But I’m going to call it a night.”

  Deke’s and Terry’s photographs briefly glowed like a Chinese lantern before bursting into flames. They were gone.

  9

  Early morning light lay even in the canyon. Gail, wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a fleece, added a few sticks of tinder to the fire. She h
eld back a towel draped around her neck, leaned in, and blew hard. The tinder caught fire. Gail angled some fatter kindling into the newborn fire, building a teepee around the flame. Satisfied she had the proper mix of draft and fuel, she balanced the charred camp grill on rocks above the growing flame. She settled the coffee pot on top.

  She stood and surveyed the site: two rafts beached, two tents, rigged fly rods safely bungee corded to small tree trunks. Mile Ten enveloped in stillness. She made her way to the water’s edge. She stared upriver. A water ouzel skittered across the run below the rapids that fed into her long pool. A trout sipped at something in the foam line just below where the rapid dropped off into the deeper water. She shed her fleece and shorts and tossed them into a pile on the sand with her towel. She kicked off her sandals. She liked being on an even footing with her surroundings: naked. She stepped into the water and couldn’t help thinking—as she always did when she entered moving water—that she never stepped into the same river twice. She loved the philosophic incongruity that on a river what had gone past was also what lay ahead. Past and future naturally blended into all that ever really mattered—the present. It’s why she loved being on the river: it never failed to stir deep thoughts, while demanding attention to mundane logistics. Off the river, the logistics often took hold and became an end in themselves, shorn of wonder.

  She waded in to midthigh depth, then dove in. She pulled and kicked hard for five or ten strokes, then let the current sweep her down river. She drew a breath and slipped beneath the surface. She swam toward the slack water closer to shore, then rose to the surface once more and began to swim toward the top of the pool, just in from the current seam. When she reached the top of the pool, she paused to take in the dense stand of pine trees that stretched from the campsite upriver. She didn’t see Terry’s head poke out from behind one of the tree trunks when she dove under once more to shoot herself into the current.

  Terry tracked Gail’s pale body, ghostly against the river’s dark-green hue. He sighed when she surfaced briefly, took a breath and sounded once more, her bottom rising briefly out of the water. He touched his groin. He was hard. He swallowed, mesmerized. Deke’s hand, clamped hard on his shoulder, broke the reverie. Deke looked past Terry to where Gail now floated on her back—head aimed downstream—breasts and pubic hair visible.

  Terry’s eyes sparkled. “Only thing sweeter than pussy, is wet pussy.”

  Deke nodded for Terry to get back to the campsite. Terry looked longingly at Gail.

  Deke gripped his shoulder harder. “Now. We need that view for at least a couple more days. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Terry abruptly wheeled on Deke and grabbed his throat. He pushed the smaller man almost effortlessly against a pine. Then he used his uncommon strength to lift him off the ground. Deke’s hands went to his throat, to try and loosen Terry’s grip. His boots clawed the air for a purchase. Terry peered at him for a moment, like a scientist examining a pinned butterfly, then released his grip and walked off. Deke bent over, struggling to catch his breath. It came in short, bunched wheezes.

  Twenty-five yards downriver, Gail, sensing something, abruptly gave up floating to tread water. She glanced upriver, at the stand of pines. She saw nothing but tree trunks.

  ** ** **

  Roarke sat on a rock at the water’s edge, his sandaled feet immersed in shallow water, his headset slung around his neck. The sun had risen high enough in the sky to angle over the canyon wall and brighten Roarke’s half of the river. The deeper current that ran along the cliff was still in shadow. Gail lowered herself on a rock beside him. The river provided a lulling whoosh—a kind of melodic pad that was joined at times by the warble of a songbird or the shrill cry of a raptor riding updrafts along the rim of the towering cliff. Gail eyed the headset and couldn’t help a smile. “Glad to see you’re listening to the original soundtrack.”

  “It’s peaceful,” Roarke admitted. “It kind of sneaks up on you.”

  “It makes me happy you feel that way,” Gail told him. “And once your ears fully adjust, you keep hearing different elements. A wild river like this really is the original symphony if you think about it. Slow in places, then it builds a faster tempo, next, you’re in this big percussive rapids section that riles your blood and stirs your adrenaline, then it reaches a crescendo and spits you out into the relief of deeper, quieter water. Beautiful, soothing strings, maybe, that put you in a pensive mood, and you go along with that for a while, happy for the relief until you turn a bend and off you go again with the giddyup portion. That’s not even counting all the guest soloists: thunder, lightning, wind, rain. All for free, too. As long as we keep it wild.” She poked Roarke with a gentle finger. “That means you, after I’m gone.”

  “Not soon, right?”

  Gail mussed his hair. “Right.”

  For a moment, they let the river run through them, wash over them. “You’re different out here than you are in Boston, Mom.”

  “Ha!” Gail chirped, “my son, the shrink.” After another bout of silence. “It’s true, I am. ”

  “I think Pop’s even getting in the flow.”

  “It sneaks up on everybody.”

  Roarke peered at his mother. “How are your bugs?”

  Gail laughed. “What bugs?!”

  Roarke glanced back at the camp and saw Deke and Terry pouring coffee. “You think Deke and Terry are bugs?” Roarke asked.

  Gail looked where Roarke was looking. “Nah. We’re going to do exactly what we want to do—what we planned to do—and they’ll probably just do their own thing once they get the hang of it.”

  She stood and angled her face to catch the sun. She squeezed her eyes shut and thrust out her arms, exuberantly.

  Roarke smiled. “Relax, Mom, you’re too tense.”

  A grin creased her sun-warmed face. “I have to remember you actually hear everything I say,” Gail told him. “You don’t always listen, but you hear.”

  10

  Gail liked to describe Montana’s seasons as, “Ten months of winter, and two months of company.” The company component was true of the scenic, mountainous western portions of the state. Elsewhere, as in Sweet Grass and other prairie towns, it was more accurately “Ten months of winter, two months of barbecue.”

  Sweet Grass, population fifty-eight, sat on the forty-ninth parallel—the border between Canada and the United States defined by the terms of the Oregon Treaty of 1846. In time it became the place where two major routes—one rail, one highway (Interstate 15)—entered Alberta, Canada. It was the most heavily traveled port in Montana and the only commercial border crossing open twenty-four hours a day. There was no physical boundary here—water feature or mountain range—just a line in the arid soil that separated wind-swept prairie land to the north, from wind-swept prairie land to the south. Which isn’t to say Sweet Grass didn’t have its hometown celebrities—Earl Bascomb, the “father of modern rodeo,” being one; Charles M. Russell, the well-known (though mostly in the nineteenth century) cowboy artist and sculptor, being the other; but if you happened to find yourself in Sweet Grass, Montana, chances were good you were passing through. Which is why the traffic was backed up for a mile at the border, matched by two hundred freight and grain cars that were stopped in their tracks within eyesight of the car snarl, its four-pack of engines sitting motionless at the border. Montana State Police Lieutenant Bobby Long suspected two fugitive suspects wanted for murder might also be trying to pass through. The sign at the Customs tolls said: WELCOME TO CANADA … BIENVENUE AU CANADA, but the welcome south of the border was hardly friendly. A half dozen heavily armed Montana state troopers, some with dogs, checked every driver’s license, every trunk, RV, and truck making its way north into Canada. It didn’t make for a happy gathering of summer travelers, something rookie trooper Billy Heston tried to take in stride as he made his way down the lineup of disgruntled drivers, holding a stack of mug shots of Deke and Terry, explaining the situation. It didn’t help that it was ninety-five degrees
on the sun-blasted sheet of concrete spread like an apron south of the actual border crossing.

  Billy stepped up to a green Honda Odyssey whose roof rack bristled with camping gear, coolers, duffel bags, and spinning rods bungee-corded to the main lump of gear. The driver’s window eased down as he leaned close. Husband and wife sat in the front seats looking a little worse for wear—a disposition well-known to survivors of summer road trips with the kids. The woman had little white dabs of bug bite cream on her face and sleeveless arms. The husband’s nose was peeling. He was unshaven. There were three kids and two dogs in the back, more gear in the far back.

  “Afternoon, folks,” Trooper Heston said. Sweat streamed out from under his trooper’s hat and down his face. “There’s a manhunt under way for two fugitives. These are their pictures. We’re making the public aware of this circumstance because they’re considered armed and dangerous, but also to solicit your help should you have seen or come across either fugitive. These are for you to hold onto. He handed Terry’s mugshot to the driver, who looked at it and handed it to his wife. Billy handed Deke’s mugshot to the driver. The face of a seven-year-old, wide eyed and freckled beneath a buzz cut, poked between the front bucket seats. “What’d they do?” he asked hopefully, “kill someone?”

  “Trevor!” his mother gasped.

  “As a matter of fact, they’re wanted for homicide,” Billy said.

  The boy wrinkled his nose. “Does that mean killing?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Trooper Heston told him. “Thank you for your patience. We have teams with dogs that will be following up. Obviously, don’t stop to pick up strangers. And if you see or come across either of these men, do not interact with them yourselves, but please call the hotline number listed on the bottom of the mug shot. They may, or may not, be traveing together. “

  Trevor couldn’t believe his good fortune. “Cool!”

  Billy tipped his hat politely and moved on to the next car. The squawk of car horns continued—some nearby, some hundreds of yards distant. Occasionally, patience prevailed and silence followed. Soon enough, a frustrated honk would unleash a chorus of collective disgruntlement. It added a layer of acoustic abrasion to an already overheated situation. Heston smiled through clenched teeth at glaring faces and reminded himself what the lieutenant had told him: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. The lieutenant was full of no-nonsense sayings and literary references collected over his sixty-one years of mostly hard living. Some were time-tried truths: A stitch in time saves nine … No time like the present, applicable to day-to-day living and general law enforcement logistics. Others, such as: He that tastes women, ruin meets, were a little less relatable to the general public.