“Tell the Indians canoes aren’t transportation. That’s how they explored Canada. Go see E.B., he’ll set you up with everything you need.” Campbell busied himself packing canoes. The other girls kept asking him questions.
“Nia, you’re teaming up with Alice today.”
He slid a canoe into the water. “Jane and Kris, you’re all set? How are you doing, Francine?”
She avoided his gaze.
“Okay, great. E.B., good morning, good to see you.” Campbell helped him load. “I have a new partner for you. Jenny French is sick. It was too late to call. Laura, you’ll be going with E.B.”
“Tell her to bring me her gear,” E.B. grumbled.
“Sorry, I’m not going anywhere on the water,” Laura said.
“Suit yourself,” Campbell said. “You can wave to us once we launch.” He set some coolers down. “Too bad. You’re going to miss a lovely trip. See? Across the river, how pretty it is?” He held out his arms. “The Missouri runs wide here, the color of coffee ice cream. We’ll be out for three days.” He cleared his throat. “You’ll be fine with us.”
A hot wind blew candy wrappers over her feet. “I’m okay here,” she said, a little uneasy.
E.B., a dour-faced man with a John Deere cap, gave Laura a disinterested look, tipped his cap, and went back to packing his canoe. Duffle bags and paddles lay in a heap beside his long legs.
Laura watched them, mesmerized. She’d never been an outdoor girl. What was the appeal? Mosquitoes? Sleeping on the ground? Food that tasted like paste? Ticks and spiders? She shivered, although it was not cold at all.
E.B. came up and stood beside her. “Name’s Ezra Benson. I’m coleader on our trip.” He held out his grease-stained fingers. “Sorry, I’ve been working on my tractor, can’t seem to get the dirt out.” He took her hand in a too-tight grip. “Ever gone canoeing or camping before?” He wore a long-sleeve khaki-colored shirt, zip-apart khaki pants, and sandals. A wide-shouldered man, he looked like an extra for some African safari magazine ad.
“Me?” Laura blinked at the early morning light and tugged at the hem of Beth Ann’s shorty-shorts. Beth Ann was a much smaller girl, and her shorts barely covered Laura’s tush.
“See if this one fits.” He held up a life jacket.
It was orange, as big as a semi, and puffy. “I don’t need that.”
“It’s mandatory. Help you if you fall in. They’re not called lifejackets for nothing, you know.”
“But I’m not going.”
“It’s a good idea. I’ve been paddling the Missouri my whole life. Sometimes rivers can be deceiving. It’s my job to protect you, keep you safe.”
Laura had heard that shit before. She left E.B. and found Campbell loading boats, pulled up close to him, and whispered.
“I can’t go with E.B.”
“Francine won’t give up her seat.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t go with anyone. Not my thing.” She held out the life jacket. “Sorry.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything,” Campbell said. “It’s just a pissant canoe camping trip, Laura. Class I. Like a bathtub. No thugs chasing you, no racing cars, and no rapids.”
Laura looked between him, the river, the fort, the brick buildings in town, and the hotel beyond. “Think they’re still there?”
“Step aside,” Francine said, shooting a look at Laura. “I need to load.” She pushed a canoe into the water.
“No need to be snappy. I never did anything to you,” Laura replied.
“And you never will.” Francine stepped into her boat.
Everyone was launching their canoes. Laura could hear Campbell calling her name. E.B. nosed his canoe near shore and waited, paddle in hand, watching her.
Francine sidled up to shore. “Laura, did they tell you anything about canoeing?” she asked. “Thought not. They’ve got mosquitoes as big as hats out here, and rats, and ticks, and poisonous snakes. And it can be stinking hot.”
“Have a great time on the river, everyone. See you later.” Laura stepped back off the ramp.
“Ready, Francine?” Campbell asked and climbed into her canoe.
“Bye!” Laura waved.
In front of her, four canoes bobbed five feet offshore. The girls, Francine, E.B., and Campbell churned their paddles in the water, striving to stay near shore and out of the current.
“See you later, then,” Campbell said.
The canoeists looked so small out there on the wide river. Laura liked land, safer any day. Behind her she heard two car doors slam.
She turned.
The Ford Focus had pulled into the parking lot.
Laura flew back down the ramp.
“Campbell, come closer!” she screamed. “Let me in! Let me in!”
Behind her she heard boots ringing on wet concrete.
“No girl says no to me!” Mike shouted, running toward her.
Laura leaned over and tried to grab Campbell’s canoe.
“Don’t do that, you’ll swamp us!” Francine said, using her paddle to fend Laura off.
“Don’t hit her, Francine,” Campbell shouted. “Laura, try E.B.’s boat.”
“But he’s so far away!” She could hear huffing behind her. E.B.’s canoe was six feet offshore.
“Jump!” Campbell said.
“But I can’t swim!”
“No need to panic,” E.B. replied, bringing the canoe within two feet of the ramp. “Climb in slowly, Laura.”
“Shit, shit, shit!” She bent down and extended one leg.
Footsteps rang on the pavement. With one leg in the boat, she leaned to place the other. And felt something grab her arm.
“Asshole!” She slammed her arm into Mike’s, twisted to get away, and flopped into the canoe shoulder first, falling on a cooler, which hurt. The boat dipped down hard, wobbled, and almost flipped over. It was tough to climb back up and take the seat.
“You’ll put a hole in the boat doing that!” E.B. yelled.
Mike jumped into the water after her.
“Get away! Paddle and paddle hard!” she screamed. “Now!” She found a paddle on the bottom of the canoe, sat up, and tried to hit Mike with it.
His fingers closed over a thwart.
“Not so fast, buddy,” E.B. said, swatting his hand with his paddle and pushing off into the current.
Laura, frantic, stabbed at the water, making spray fly through the air.
“Laura, go slow, we’re safe now. Not so fast,” E.B. said once they were ten feet from shore.
“Teach me some other time.” She dug in.
“Easy, easy.”
Her strokes made the canoe turn to shore where it stopped five feet away from a pile of rocks.
“Not again!” Laura yelled.
She paddled backward. The canoe shuddered and didn’t move.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” E.B. said.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re on a rock.”
She grasped both sides of the canoe.
Bart waded into the river, Mike beside him.
“Get it off!”
“Face forward or you’ll dump us.”
Laura felt like meat.
E.B. maneuvered the canoe around the rock. The canoe moved another ten feet.
“So who are those guys, Laura? Friends of yours?”
“Not really.” Laura twisted her paddle in the water to make them go faster.
The canoe spun down the river, totally out of control.
“Stop paddling,” E.B. said, “unless, of course, you want to say hello to your friends again?”
Above the hills beyond, a vast expanse of blue studded with white clouds made her feel very small.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sunday, 9:30 a.m.
On the river
LAURA AND E.B.
The shore and the river went by in a blur as they did 360s down the river. Laura tried to take a stroke, but the canoe kept spinning.
Behind
them the little town had disappeared and Mike with it. She shifted her focus to the water and tried to calm down. As if she could. Ahead of them, the other canoes were a hundred yards down, and as small as specks. Was that how she looked from shore? A speck? She hoped so, but small as she was, she wasn’t small enough. For all she knew, Mike and Bart would follow along on the shore and pick them off the first time they landed. “Is there a road out here?” she asked. She scanned the dun-colored hills and endless countryside.
“In the Missouri River Breaks?” E.B. laughed. “This is wilderness. We’ll soon be in canyon country, and no one drives into canyon country, unless they’re crazy, drunk, or both. Like those guys chasing you? Why were they chasing you?”
“Just some assholes,” she said. “They think I took some money of theirs, but I didn’t.” That was far from the truth, but it would have to do.
“You have interesting friends,” E.B. said.
“Like I said, they’re not my friends.”
“All right, then,” he said. “So, again, this is all you see. No houses, no roads at all, sometimes a homesteader’s cabin. That’s why we come. Enjoy it.”
Enjoy it? She couldn’t turn to look behind her; the sun was beating on her head; she missed her sunglasses, purse, keys, cell phone, Stella, and all her clothes; and she was in a boat in the middle of a river with a man she barely knew.
“They can’t follow you unless they have a boat. Did you see them with a boat?” E.B. asked.
“I don’t think so,” she answered, looking back very carefully. “I don’t see much of anything.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be. So, Laura,” E.B. said, “watch me a sec, see if you can use the paddle the same way I can. Easy turning around, please. Ready now? Slowly, slowly.”
She eyed him over her shoulder. Jesus, the shore was a long way away. What if they went over? She tightened her grip on the paddle.
“Try to relax. Just easy moves. That’s better, thank you. You know any strokes?”
Strokes? Oh yeah, she knew strokes. The stocking stroke, the caress stroke, the inside and outside spins. Nope, telling him any of that would not be good.
“Uh, not really,” she mumbled. She put her paddle in the river and pulled back. Water flew in the air.
“Lesson one. Leave the water in the river.” He laughed.
Laura slipped her hand in, expecting cold. It was surprisingly warm. Cliffs moved by, cows grazed on the shore, and trees fluttered in the breeze. One stroke at a time. Stay in the boat and keep paddling. And say over and over, you’re safe. But she didn’t feel safe.
“All right, let’s pick it up a bit. Time to catch up with Campbell and everyone else.”
She tried to put more strength in her stroke.
“Better. Now don’t shove the blade all the way in. Hold the paddle perpendicular to the water.”
She tried; that felt awkward.
“Use your shoulders, your back, not your arms.”
Her shoulders? What? Not move her arms? Why not? She pivoted from the waist, feeling like a moron. “Like this?” Paddling had to be easier than dancing on the pole any day.
“Keep the paddle on your right. Otherwise, you make us zigzag. I can steer from here.”
“Gee whiz, E.B., I’m doing the best I can.” She turned and glared at him.
The canoe rolled to the left. She panicked and leaned the other way, and it rolled to the right. Tipping farther, farther. Laura grabbed the boat with both hands and screamed. Water poured inside.
The canoe bobbed back up, sharp and tidy as a soldier. “Learn something? Don’t turn around so fast in a canoe! You almost dumped us!”
“Oh thank God.” Laura clutched her life jacket, her face white. She felt something missing. Oh shit. “My paddle!” It was bobbing five feet away. She reached for it.
“Don’t you dare reach for it. You’ll dump us again. Haven’t you ever gone canoeing before?”
“Um, I’ve done other things,” she mumbled. “But not really . . .”
“I’ll bring us closer.”
“It’s just right there.” Laura leaned farther, her belly on the rail, her arm outstretched.
“Like I said, please, please don’t move!”
She sat back, as low as she could go, and held on to the canoe with both hands. “In a bad mood or are you always like this?”
“I can’t remember.” He moved the canoe slowly and surely toward the paddle. “Okay, stay still.”
“Smart aleck,” she muttered under her breath.
“What’d you say?” E.B. grunted as he made the canoe turn around. “When I say so—and only when I say so—pick it up. All right?”
When they were practically on top of the paddle, E.B. said go and Laura closed her hands around the handle. She tucked it inside the canoe where it would be safe.
A few minutes later they were back in the current, moving sideways down the river.
“Aren’t you going to take a stroke? It’s a lot easier if both of us are doing it,” he said. “It’s like sex, Laura.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“As a farmer, that’s the best attempt at a sense of humor I’ve ever had. Haven’t you ever heard of tippy canoes?”
“I thought that was a joke.”
“Not a joke in my book.”
“We’re lucky we didn’t drown. I didn’t know.” She adjusted the straps on her life jacket and took a few strokes. Damn thing was just not tight enough.
“Big mistake number one is letting go of the paddle.”
Big mistake number one was moving to Montana. Life would be way better if she’d never left LA. “You could have warned me.”
“About what? The ‘friends’ chasing you or the fact that you’re in canoe? They wobble. Get over it. Just who are those guys, anyway?”
Big mistake number two, getting into this canoe.
He took a deep breath. “Okay. Paddle a bit to keep us going straight, if you will. No sudden moves.”
Clouds of gnats flew into her eyes and mosquitoes peppered her arms. There were more hells in the great outdoors than working in a strip club any old day. “You have anything for the bugs?”
“Try some bug goop.” He tossed her a small bottle, then another. “And some vanilla extract—that’ll keep the gnats away. You’ll smell like cake, but it works great.”
She smoothed sticky stuff on her arms and face, and dabbed vanilla under her ears and on her neck like perfume. Weird combination. “You use the bug goop and the vanilla and sunscreen all at once? Why don’t they make all-in-one?”
“Keep your eye out. If you spot riffles—logs just below the surface of the water—let me know. In the meanwhile, help bail. We’re coming in for a ten-minute break.”
“But what about catching up with the others?” Laura asked.
“They stop too. And they should be waiting for us. We won’t be more than a few minutes or so behind them.”
They bumped the shore hard. Marsh grass as far as she could see.
“Good enough,” she muttered, stood up, and felt the ground dissolve under her foot.
“Grab the painter.”
She tried to pull her foot up, but the mud sucked at her flip-flop. She pressed her other foot down.
“Like I said, grab the painter.”
She felt a rising sense of panic. Both feet were stuck. “What’s that?”
“It’s the only rope on the boat.”
“You could have told me.” Shit, the boat was drifting away. “E.B., hold up. Come back!”
“Everything? Do I have to tell you everything?”
“It’s not funny,” Laura said, trying to extract herself out of the mud.
“All you have to do is grab the rope when I come in again, okay?”
She reached forward, took the line from the bow, pulled him in, and, with the canoe under her, was able to pull her feet and her flip-flops out of the mud. She sat down on the bow of the canoe. “I thought the mud would n
ever let go.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“And people die out here?”
“Not really, not from mud, anyway. Not in a while.” He busied himself with taking off his paddling gloves. “Have some water.” He offered her a bottle.
“All this excitement.” She took a long drink. “I need to go. Where should I . . .?” Not much around but bent, broken cornstalks and endless vistas.
He got out and pulled the canoe hard up on shore. “Take your time. I won’t look.”
She slipped a little getting up on the dirt. Caked mud covered the bottom of her shoes, making them slip.
“Do your business and come back.”
She took another step and stared at a broad expanse of stubble and earth.
“Not a good idea to go so far in the cornfield, Laura,” his voice gentle again, at her ear. How had he come so close so fast?
“I don’t need any help.”
“No? Suit yourself. We do have ticks out here.”
“Ticks? How am I supposed to . . . you know?”
“Squat as high as you can.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Not so used to nature, are you?” E.B. turned away.
Doing her best to keep her balance, Laura pulled down Beth Ann’s shorts. Just don’t fall down, she told herself. Easy, easy. Halfway through her business, she stared at her legs, strong and sure like always; good thing she practiced her squats at home. But there was something wrong. Little specks of mud clung to her calves. Her legs were covered with them. No reason to be so filthy so early in the trip. Standing up again, she pulled up her pants, then bent down to knock them off. But they did something strange. They were moving!
CHAPTER SIX
Sunday, 11:00 a.m.
On the river
E.B. AND LAURA
“Don’t make such a big deal out of it. Just brush the ticks off before they dig in.”
“How can you live here with all these bugs?”
Laura cried, frantically wiping her legs. “Whatever for?”
“Don’t tell my mom you don’t like Montana. She wouldn’t like to hear that.” E.B. shoved the canoe back into the current. He could ask her where she lived and make an argument out of it, but he had no desire. City people. The less he talked to them the better.
Montana Rhapsody Page 3
