The River

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I’m not bluffing. Brother, you point the bow to the bank, there.” Jack tossed his head toward a shallow cove and an eroded cut where maybe a game trail ramped into the water from thick woods. “Point it and get us there. Now.”

For a second Wynn was stunned. He thought, Has he gone fucking crazy? But he did. He ruddered hard and reached forward and laid into the stroke, a stroke to keep them moving cross-current, and they bumped the bank and Jack hopped out with the painter rope and the rifle slung over his shoulder. He tied it off fast to a young fir and jerked his head toward the woods and the thickening darkness. “Get out. Leave her. Won’t be long. Hurry up. I got the boat.” The canoe spun stern into the bank and Jack crouched and steadied it as Wynn shimmied forward, around and over her, and hopped out. He was towering over Jack and he might have shoved him into the water but he didn’t. Jack could come up shooting, who knew what. What the hell was going on? The day at its end—burnished in the last reluctant light—seemed to warp and twist and twang like a bent saw blade.

Wynn stood over Jack. “What the fuck,” he whispered.

Jack glanced up at him. “I know, Big. Just frigging follow me. You’ll thank me.” The tone had softened. He sounded like his friend. “Let’s go.”

Wynn did, follow him. What choice did he have? Into the true night under the trees, downriver, and out to the margin of brush along the bank where they found another game trail, probably moose. They moved as fast as they could and could see enough to make out the shapes of river stones in the dirt, the tufts of grass and moss, the orange bark of the bigger spruce, barely ruddy in the dusk. They came to another scrim of trees and the sky opened and lightened beyond them and they knew they had come to the clearing of the take-out, what must be the opening of a beach, a camp, an overlook. They could hear the rapid now as a proximal thunder.

Jack put his finger to his lips and unslung the rifle and they moved forward slowly. Crouched in twilight like two predators, they pushed through a stand of tall grass and looked down on a sandy bench with two old fire rings. The bench was fifteen feet above the water and beyond it they could see the whitewater of the heavy rapid fluorescing like snow. A trail wound from the camp around the cut-rock overlook down to a small gravel beach they could partly see. The beach was the mandatory take-out for the portage around the falls. And at the edge of the rock ledge, looking directly down on the gravel bar, lay a man. A man in a broad-brimmed safari hat.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Wynn whispered right against Jack’s ear.

“He’s holding his 12-gauge shotgun is what he’s doing. Waiting for us. You can see it in his hands. His hands are fucking shaking—you can see it from here.”

Wynn huffed. It was an exhalation of surprise, of shock, of profound disappointment, as if he’d just looked down at his compass and the needle was spinning. Pierre was not spinning or moving, he was preternaturally still. “Where’s all his shit?” Wynn whispered. “His camp?”

“It’s all packed in the canoe below. Ambush, flee. That’s his plan. It’s not a very good one. A search party will surely come. I guess he might be thinking to hack us all up into bits with his ax and throw everything in the river. Send the canoe over the falls so whatever gear is left looks like a flip. The headline will be ‘River Accident.’ ”

Wynn had no response. He’d had the wind knocked out of him playing hockey and it usually took a few panicked seconds to find his breath. He felt like that now.

Jack was on one knee. He brought up the scoped rifle and twisted his left arm through the leather sling and sighted.

“What do you wanna do?” Wynn said, more loudly. “Shoot him where he lies?”

Jack had his eye to the scope and the sling twisted tight against his arm. “What do you wanna do?” he said. “Truss him up and carry him for a week down the river, back to back with the wife he tried to kill?”

Jack felt Wynn’s hand grip his right arm. Jack’s right forefinger lay over the trigger guard. Wynn shook him. “Whoa!” Wynn whispered, urgent. “We’ve gotta talk to him. We’ve gotta know. He still might think we killed her, he still might be scared of us. Or those Texans.” He didn’t know. “Jack! Fuck.” Wynn shook him. “You can’t just murder him! We’ve gotta confront him.”

Jack lifted his eye off the scope and studied his buddy. The dusk was thickening. If they were going to shoot anybody through a 4-12X scope, it would have to be soon. Okay, Wynn needed closure, clarity, whatever the hell, let’s go. “Okay, Wynn. Fuck it. This is on you. This is it. On three we’ll move down the slope slow. I’ll cover him. We’ll get as close as we can so he knows he’s cooked.”

Wynn nodded.

“One, two, three.” They stood. They pushed out of the trees and the tall grass and stepped down the slope. Jack carried the rifle in front of him. It was grass, moss, rocks. Pierre was sixty feet away. Wynn stepped on a sloping root and his right foot skidded along it and he loosed a rock and nearly stumbled. The rock clacked on the stones below. And Pierre jumped. He wheeled, crouched, and Jack saw the muzzle of the shotgun flash. Spit flame. And the explosion at close quarters. Branches and leaves tore behind them to their left. Jack shouldered the rifle and sighted. He had him; Pierre lunged for the trail. Jack swung and led him and fired. He might have, might have nailed him. But Pierre had leapt behind the outcrop. It was a perfect shot. Jack was running. Running down the slope and looking for the kill as he would an elk. The trail vanished behind the guard rock of exposed ledge. He ran. He would find the man crumpled behind it. He would have zero remorse. He half turned once to see if Wynn was hit. Wynn was behind him, good. Jack loosed his feet down the slope and jumped to the sand on the bench and brought the rifle up again, both eyes open, and came around the ledge and—

Nothing. If the man had been hit it hadn’t been fatal. Jack blinked. Fuck. The man’s hat lay on the sand of the trail like a giant fungus. Jack ran. He fast-stepped down the rocky steps and sand of the narrow trail. It dropped to the river and he leapt onto the broken shale of a beach and there was the canoe. The canoe on the black current, the man a shadow now, the boat sliding past a point of granite into the tight right bend. Jack lifted the rifle, both eyes open, and half sighted through the dim scope, the shadow sliding across it, and he fired, the blast of flame, and the canoe and the man slid past the rock and out of sight. Into the charry night.

Because that’s what it reeked of. Charcoal. They could not see the fire, no plumes clouded the stars, no glow like some city crowned the trees, but it reeked of burned-out forest and scorched ground, and all night they heard the flurry and peeps of birds flying over.