Chasing the Bear

Chapter 20

It would have been peaceful drifting along on the river, under the trees, if there weren't somebody after us with a bowie knife. And if we had something besides Oreo cookies for breakfast.

"Do you think he's still after us?" Jeannie said.

I noticed dark bruises on her wrists. Probably from when her father grabbed her.

"Don't know that he's not," I said.

"He'll be drunk," Jeannie said.

"Still?" I said.

"He's drunk all the time," Jeannie said. "I don't think he can stand being him if he's sober."

"I wonder how he got to be that way," I said.

"I used to wonder that too," Jeannie said. "Now I don't even care. He's too awful."

"Was there ever a time he was nice?" I said.

"No."

"Poor devil," I said.

"Poor wife and daughter," Jeannie said.

"You don't like him at all," I said.

"I hate him," Jeannie said.

I had nothing to say to that.

Big drops of rain began to splat on the water, sending out wide ripples. I looked up through the leaves and the sky was dark. It got darker as I watched. And the rain came harder. Pearl didn't mind being wet. But she didn't like the feel of the raindrops hitting her. Jeannie unrolled the blankets and put one over Pearl. She offered me the second one.

"No," I said. "You."

"But what about you?" she said.

"I'm a Spenser," I said. "Tough."

She smiled and put the blanket over her head and around her shoulders.

"My hair must be a mess," she said.

"Kind of," I said.

"You didn't have to agree so quick," Jeannie said.

"But you still look good," I said.

"Ha!" Jeannie said.

The rain came harder. It was quite dark under the trees. The river meandered mostly, in big looping curves, so that ten miles on the river might be one mile as the crow flies. At the moment we were in one of the more or less straight stretches, and ahead of us I could see something through the murk. It might have been a bridge. The rain came straight down and fast. It was hard to see through it. We drifted toward whatever the something was, and when we got close enough, we saw it was a railroad bridge.

"Maybe it won't be raining so hard under the bridge," I said.

"But if it's a railroad bridge," Jeannie said, "won't it just be a trestle? You know, ties on a bridge frame?"

"Maybe there'll be some sort of solid cover at each end," I said.

"Can't be worse than this," Jeannie said.

I steered us with my broken oar toward the near end of the bridge. As we got close to it, I made out a sign. It said:

CAUTION

WATERFALL AHEAD

NO BOATS BEYOND

THIS POINT

I could feel the current quicken a little even as I was reading the sign. I steered the boat to the shore under the bridge and tied it to a sapling.

"Far as the boat's gonna take us," I said.

We were under a support arch of concrete at the near end of the bridge, and it did protect us from the rain. Pearl looked around at me as if to say, "It's about time." With the blanket draped on her head she looked like a painting of a Dutch peasant woman my father and I had looked at once in a museum in Denver.

"When the rain stops," I said, "we can climb up onto the bridge and follow the railroad tracks. Eventually they'll take us someplace."

"Soon, I hope," Jeannie said.

"Sooner or later, tracks lead someplace," I said.

We sat for a while under the bridge. But the rain kept coming. I was already soaked through. But it wasn't cold, and there was no wind. Once you get soaked, you get sort of used to it. We sat some more. Pearl sat under her blanket and looked at the river.

Then from upriver, a long way off, I heard something. I leaned forward trying to hear better.

"What?" Jeannie said.

I pointed upriver.

"Listen," I said.

We listened.

"My God," Jeannie said.

I nodded.

"It's the bass boat."