Alger Whitecloud, scrambling down the rocks, screamed, "Run!"
He flung himself into the river.
Bonechopper Bjornquist appeared, drew his gun, and fired at Alger as he tumbled in the whitewater, downstream toward the big-running Harkett.
Bonechopper fired three times, the sound of the shots almost lost in the roar of the river. Gina hadn't thought anything could be as loud as a gunshot. These rivers up here were something.
Bonechopper saw her.
She took off into the trees as more shots popped from his gun.
Chapter 20 – The Teeth of the Gorge
If, two weeks ago, you had told me I'd be pacing a ramshackle children's camp twelve hundred miles from my neighborhood in West Hollywood, wishing for a hot shower and a place to store a dead body, I'd have—well, come to think of it, I wouldn't have dared laugh. Fate is cruel enough without tempting it.
Petey was helping keep the increasingly restive Joey Preston occupied by bringing him bits of the environment to comment on. Joey must have looked thrillingly tough to Petey, with his scraped face and muscled arms.
"That's a Doug fir cone," pronounced Joey. "You know why? It's got all these little mice hiding in it!"
"Where?" craned Petey.
"See all their little tails sticking out?"
"Oh," said Petey. "So it's not real mice."
"The Indians thought so."
"Yeah? Were they dumb or something?"
"Oh, gosh, no. They just looked at things different. Now this here's something special. Where'd you find it?"
"Over in the trees."
"Base of a big cedar?"
"Yeah!"
"Base of the tree have white splashes on it?"
"Yeah! I think it's poop!"
"No, it's puke!"
"Yeah?"
"It's an owl pellet."
"What's that?"
"Let's break 'er open and see."
"Wow! Little bones."
"That's a bird's skull."
"Mom, look!"
"That's nice, honey. Wash your hands."
At about eleven the guys returned carrying Lance's body wrapped in a length of tent canvas from the storeroom.
It was a chilling sight, that long bundle over George's shoulder.
Petey was still indoors with Joey.
I directed the guys to the equipment shed, because it seemed the coldest, tightest shelter and the sand floor made it, I thought, somewhat drier than any other building.
"Yeah, this'll have to do," grunted George.
They'd moved pretty fast, taking turns carrying Lance over the increasingly worn-in trail from the camp to the log bridge at the gorge.
Both guys were pale from their effort. I made hot coffee for them and we hunkered in the kitchen cabin. George said, "I examined him. Didn't take his clothes off, but it's clear he was beat to hell in that river. He wasn't strangled, and I don't think he was shot."
Daniel said, "He got a bad cut on his hand somehow, and it was mended with an adhesive and duct tape. I doubt he could have done it himself."
"Was he...had he gotten—you know—" I asked.
"No, not yet," said Daniel. "Even scavengers don't get down to the bottom of that gorge too often, I guess."
"The body's starting to decompose," George added, "but these cold conditions are retarding it. I'm sure a medical examiner'll be able to determine the actual cause of death."
"I want to find my sister."
George finished his coffee and looked at me.
Daniel started to say, "You stay here and we'll—"
"No."
"Well, we can't all go," he protested. "Somebody has to stay here with Petey and Joey."
"That would be you," and I walked out.
As the door croaked shut, I heard George say, "She's got to."
As he and I hiked toward the river, George hauling Daniel's rope and tackle, I said, "I know we need to look downstream." George was silent.
The terrain along the gorge's lip was fairly easy. We began at the log bridge and went downstream from there. If I hadn't been so intent on my single purpose, I'd have been awed by the treacherous beauty of the mountains and the river slicing through the forested ravines.
The absence of the rain after the days of storm was like the presence of a friend. George and I hiked over the boot-high scrub and bare rock, our eyes on the swirling river far below.
Mostly I found my eyes drawn to the eddies and jags where a person might lodge.
Every so often we'd see a big snag—a tangle of branches or a root ball—and get out Petey's telescope to check it out.
I didn't want to be looking for Gina's dead body, because I still felt she wasn't dead. I hoped maybe we'd find her clinging somewhere like Joey Preston.
Or, preferably, combing her hair in a cave next to a campfire, an elk haunch roasting on a spit, having decided to go native, beyond Earth Puppetdom.
George helped me over a fallen tree that was sticking halfway into the gorge, and I thought of the chainsaw, which I'd moved to make room for Lance's body.
"Hey, you know, I found something in that shed I forgot to men—"
"Gina!" George shouted, pointing.
"What!" I followed his finger across the gorge.
A small figure in a filthy pink jacket was running, stumbling, scrambling madly across an open area toward the precipice.
She heard George's shout, spotted us, and screamed, "Help me!"
"Wait!" George called to her over the voice of the river. "Stop! Calm down!"
I felt mad with joy, yet why was my sister in such distress?
Gina dashed this way and that at the lip of the gorge. "Where's the bridge?" she shrieked.
"Go that way!" We pointed upstream. George hollered through cupped hands, "It's less than a mile!"
She sped off in that direction, and we hustled the same way on our side.
I hadn't seen my sister move so fast since we were kids. Her hair streamed back like it used to do when she speed-skated the ice rink in Wisconsin. Her feet were a blur.
In a few minutes we'll be hugging.
In a few minutes we'll be safe together.
In a few minutes my world turned upside down.
With a short cry, Gina suddenly veered away from the river and began running in the opposite direction, back downstream.
"No, keep going!" I shouted.
Then I saw why she had changed course.
A hairy creature burst from the forest and rushed for her. A bear? Bigfoot? It moved like a gorilla but was dressed in a plaid jacket and work jeans.
It carried a gun in its hand.
My brain was barely able to process these things with any coherence.
Gina came to a cleft in the lip, and with a final desperate look at me standing across from her with my mouth open, she began climbing down the nearly sheer face of the gorge.
"No!" I screamed.
"His gun's empty!" yelled George. "He's insignificant to you now!"
That was George: totally competent, totally clear in the face of chaos.
Except I didn't think he was right about the creature being insignificant to Gina.
The tall, hairy thing reached the place she had begun her downclimb and roared swear words onto her. He looked around the ground, but there were no loose rocks, or I'm sure he would have tried to stone her.
I don't believe the creature was aware of George and me.
Gina was descending, slipping, catching herself violently on protrusions, her arms wrenching behind her this way and that, slipping again, toward an undercut place in the rock wall. With sudden crystal clarity I could see what was about to occur: she was about to die trying to cross this river to us.
I could not let that happen.
I began my own downclimb, at the same time yelling, "Back off, asshole!"
"Rita!" shouted George. "No, goddamn it! Stop!"
I caught a glimpse of the ape-man retreating into the woods.
&n
bsp; Gina slid to the undercut and plunged from it. She landed on her side on a rock—I heard her scream—then rolled off into the roaring foam. She disappeared entirely. An eternal few seconds later her head bobbed up as the river took her.
I was already a third of the way down. I kept going, managing to stay a foot or two ahead of George's grasping hand.
"Goddamn it, Rita, you're gonna die too!" he yelled.
Gina was lost in the whitewater below.
I was now halfway down. Somehow my eyes managed to scan downstream for my sister as well as look for footholds.
I saw her.
Gina had caught herself on a rock, or been caught, slammed into it, on the near side, our side, of the river, maybe only a hundred feet downstream of where she fell in. The current was pounding her; she looked like a rag doll in a washing machine.
Her head was above the water, her face a mask of agony. She seemed to be holding the rock with one arm.
She was alive; she was still alive.
In another minute I reached the river and began scrambling over the rocks toward her. George was far behind me now.
A truck-sized boulder loomed. I clambered to the top and was en route down using only the friction of my hands and boot toes when I lost my grip.
Lost my grip.
A brief blank space of pure helplessness.
I don't remember the shock of the glacial water.
I don't remember how long I was under.
I do remember the quiet fury of the river bottom, the water clearer than ice, the glowing brown gravel that my hands automatically pushed away from me, and then I was tumbling ass over end in a fury of slapping white, gulping as much water as air.
I fended off rocks with my feet.
I swept past Gina, her pink coat a smear in my peripheral vision. If she was calling to me, I couldn't hear it.
Sideways, I slid over a smooth, shelflike rock and splashed into a calm pool, only to be pushed under by the wave over my head. I was carried underwater against my will. Panic rose inside me like a monster that wanted to take my oxygen.
Suddenly I was in the bright foam again, same spot, and I gasped a breath, looking downstream for the next hazard, when again I was forced underwater. And I wasn't traveling downstream.
Yes, of course: the hydraulic Daniel had pointed out from the bridge yesterday.
It was massive.
And I was in it.
Down I went again.
Scraped along the bottom, going upstream.
And up to the surface.
Gasp.
Down again.
Underwater, all I knew was chaos, the rocky bottom, slick, hard rocks like bowling balls. I struggled to think. The water was so icy, most of my sensations were suspended.
What had Daniel said? Sometimes the river spits you out.
Sometimes you die.
Well, yeah.
I hadn't the stamina to wait to be spit out. Somehow I had to break the cycle, which had gone on for what—a minute? A week?
I needed leverage. I could get none while on the surface, I reasoned. So the next time I went under I flailed all my limbs, trying to push or jerk myself out of the cataclysmic prison that held me.
These thoughts, actually, were no more thoughts than the panicked vagueness that flows through your mind when you're fighting your way through a nightmare. The water pounded my ears.
In the bare instant I felt one knee make contact with the bottom, I pushed off as hard as I could.
And my God, I was free: moving in the current again, my head above water. I tried to orient myself, feet downstream, tried to see what was ahead, when the current slammed me into what felt like a cow fence. I lodged there.
I was stuck in a big snag, the naked network of a root mat from a huge tree, the dirt having long been washed away. A skeleton of reddish roots, tough and old as bone.
My jacket was gone. The roots were knotty, and the current pressing my body against them made me feel I was going to get pushed through the root mat like cheese through a grater.
I clung there trying to breathe between surges of whitewater. The water broke over my head in a rough pattern, one-two-three-smash!-one-two-ka-three-smash!
I tried to crawl upward, but the current tore at my lower body like dogs. My boots were gone. My socks were gone.
Never in a million years could I have imagined this happening to me.
My arms began to burn, though my fingers felt numb. With a blast of will, I twisted my fingers into the roots, hoping they'd cramp up and hold me. All I wanted was not to join that deadly flow again; my red hands clung to those roots like two raw little crabs.
Turning my neck, I was able to see Gina upstream, still clutching the bank.
But I was on the wrong fucking side of the river. In the tumult we had switched sides, so to speak, and now Gina clung to the bank I'd tumbled from, while my root mat jutted from the other side—the ape-man side whence Gina had come.
How was George going to rescue me?
The water surged over my head. One-two-three-smash!
I saw George to be roughly equidistant from Gina and me: she on his side of the river, though farther upstream than me. He continued to clamber, forced by the configuration of the cliff face to angle downward between us.
But ah! I saw rocks, a sequence of rocks, a practical footpath of them across the river a short way from me.
And I furthermore realized that because I could see no more whitewater beyond the line of rocks, they formed the lip of the falls Joey Preston had referred to.
Well, I didn't care how big the drop was, because George was about to save me via that rock path. I caught sight of him downclimbing steadily, almost to the river level now, keeping safe, being methodical, but visibly hurrying, coming to me.
My God, I love him.
One-two-ka-three-ploosh!
Is this my limit? My breasts were getting strangled, my hip bones smushed, my lungs compressed.
Gina can't last much longer either.
I could see her and she could see me, and I realized with sudden horror that she was nearing death. Her eyes went duller and duller as the river pounded her, her head lolling into the whitewater, then up again as she choked for breath. She was about to lose consciousness. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Her face splooshed into the foam again.
As did mine.
God in heaven, we've got seconds to live at most.
My arms and legs felt increasingly numb from the cold water;
in fact my entire body felt extremely queer, like pins and needles deep in my guts.
As George continued his way to me, I mentally said farewell to my sister. He could not save both of us at the same time.
I had failed her.
What did my inner vow matter—the one where I told myself I'd take care of her forever, I'd never let her get hurt again? That vow was shattering to pieces like the water in this river.
I'd let her come up to these crazy woods in the first place.
I'd rushed to her rescue five minutes ago but had screwed that up like a professional idiot.
I hated myself with every fiber of my being.
I choked, my nose full of frigid river water, my vision dimming.
Nothing to do now but tell her goodbye.
My fingers began to slip from the root mat.
I closed my eyes.
When I open my eyes, he will be leaping the stones across the falls. Ten more seconds and he will be here. Ten more seconds and I will be in his arms.
Farewell, dear beautiful, brave, fuckup sister. Lance should've steered clear of you. Or you of him.
Had my mind been able to leap forward, I might have pictured the future without Gina. No one to tell the worst of my troubles to (a boyfriend or husband can listen to some troubles, but not the worst ones; they just can't handle it), nobody to share gin and potato chips with, nobody to pick up cheap chocolate when I forgot, nobody to yell at over the red towel with the whites in the laundry. Nobody t
o sing Petey to sleep with blues songs filled with allegories about sex and death.
Hold on, hold on, all I have to do is hold on, I told myself. George is coming. I love him with all my heart. Yes, he is mine, and I am his. It had been true all along, hadn't it? Only you hadn't believed it.
OK. Now.
I opened my eyes, a smile actually coming to my lips, ready to release myself to his strength.
I gasped with shock.
For his figure was not getting larger; it was getting smaller.
He had turned upstream and was working his way toward Gina.
What the hell!
I watched in total denial as he set himself against a rock. He wedged his body somehow, then stripped off his jacket, wrapped one sleeve around his forearm, and flung the other sleeve to her.
My fingers slipped entirely from the cold wet roots. Desperately, I caught myself with an elbow.
Gina could not reach the jacket sleeve; evidently her free arm had been disabled somehow—I could not see it in the whitewater; I could only see her face slipping ever more frequently into the killing foam.
The river sounded like a thousand wolves howling for our lives.
I couldn't feel my legs at all now. I tried to swerve my hips to see if they'd simply been ripped off by the cold, boiling current.
I could not believe George would save Gina instead of me. I simply could not believe it.
I thought he loved me.
I thought he thought Gina was a pain in the ass.
Maybe he was secretly in love with her and was only nice to me to try to get her to notice him.
Now I could hear him calling encouragement to her.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, said my obscene little heart.
Or had I gone insane and none of this was happening?
Yeah, well, fuck you! Fuck both of you!
To wait was to die.
From far above I heard Daniel and Petey shouting. Fat lot of good they can do me while Daniel ties his knots and shit.
Yeah, well, fuck all the whole goddamn bunch of you.
And my old friend anger came to me. My old enemy.
It knew I needed it.
Fair rage, the double-edged sword of my life. Rage, the red curtain that rose from below my eyeballs when I needed it most.
It was now imperative that I emerge from this river to dump George for the last and final time, if I didn't kill him—and Gina—first.
On Location Page 18
