29
IT WAS A ROCKET RIDE.
Nate was in the bow of the boat, holding the sides with both hands to steady himself. His job was to warn Joe, who was manning the oars, of oncoming rocks and debris—full- grown trees, cattle, a horse, an old wooden privy—by shouting and pointing. Joe missed most of them, rowing furiously backwards and turning while pointing the bow at the hazard and pulling away from it. They hit a drowned cow so hard that the impact knocked Nate to the side and Joe lost his grip on the oars.
Without Joe steering, the boat spun tightly to the right. Joe scrambled on his hands and knees on the floor of the boat through twelve inches of icy, sloshing water, trying to get back on the oars, when they hit the privy.
The shock sent both Nate and Joe falling to the side, which tipped the boat and allowed gallons of water to flow in.
They were sinking.
Luckily, the river calmed and Joe was able to man the oars again. Straining against both the current and hundreds of pounds of water inside the boat, he kept the oar blades stiff and fully in the water and managed to take the boat to shore. They hit a sandy bank and stopped suddenly.
Joe moaned and sat back on his seat. “This isn’t going well.”
Nate crawled back on his bench and wrung the water out of his ponytail. Joe watched as Nate patted his slicker down, making sure he still had his weapon.
“We need a big rubber raft for this,” Nate said.
“We don’t have one.”
They got out and pushed the side of the boat with as much strength as they had, finally tipping it enough so most of the water flowed back out to the river. With the loss of the weight, the boat bobbed and started to race downstream again. Joe held on to the side, splashing through the water, the boat propelling him downstream, then finally launching himself back in. Nate pulled himself in and fell clumsily to the floor.
Joe pointed the bow downriver, and their speed increased. He could hear a roar ahead, a roar much bigger than what they had just gone through.
“Get ready!” Joe shouted.
Nate reached out for the rope that ran the length of the gunwales and wrapped his wrists through it with two twists.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Joe asked. “If the boat flips, you may not be able to get out of that rope.”
“Then don’t flip the boat,” Nate called over his shoulder.
Joe could feel their speed pick up. The air filled with spray from the rollers and rapids ahead. They were going so fast now that he doubted he could take the boat to the bank for safety if he wanted to. Which he did.
THE RIVER NARROWED into a foaming chute. What had two days ago been gentle riffles on the surface of the lazy river were now five- and six-foot rollers. On the sides of the river, trees reached out with branches that would skewer them if they got too close.
They had to go straight down the middle.
Joe knew the trick would be to keep the bow pointed straight downriver. If he let the bow get thrown right or left, the current would spin them and they’d hit a wall of water sideways, either swamping the boat or flipping it.
“Here we go!” Nate shouted, then threw back his head and howled like a wolf.
The bow started to drift to the left, and Joe pulled back hard on the right oar. It would be tough to keep the oars in the water as they hit the rollers, but he would have to. If he rowed back and whiffed—the oar blade skimming the surface or catching air—he would lose control.
“Keep it straight!” Nate hollered.
Suddenly, they were pointing up and Joe could see clouds. A second later they crested, the front half of the boat momentarily out of the water, and the boat tipped and plunged straight down. He locked the oar grips with his fists, keeping them parallel to his chin, keeping the blades in the water.
They made it. Only a little splash came into the boat.
But before he could breathe again, they were climbing another roller, dropping again so swiftly he thought he’d left his stomach upriver, then climbing again, aiming straight at the clouds.
Joe kept the boat straight through seven massive rollers.
When the river finally spit them out onto a flat that moved swiftly but was much more calm, Joe closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.
“Damn,” Nate said with admiration. “That was perfect.”
Joe relaxed his hands and arms and gave in to the terrible pain that now pulsed from exertion in his shoulders, back, and thighs.
“JOE,” NATE SAID, turning around on his bench and facing Joe at the oars, “about Marybeth last year.”
“Not now,” Joe said sharply.
“Nothing happened,” Nate said. “I never should have behaved that way. I let us both down.”
“It’s okay,” Joe said. “I mean it.”
“I wish I could find a woman like that,” Nate said. He started to say more, then looked at Joe’s face, which was set in a mask.
