The River

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

This time they all three wore the life vests. They put her in Jack’s rain jacket and added more boughs to her seat to try to keep her out of the bilge water, but once they got into any kind of real rapids or even a feisty riffle she would get soaked. Not ideal, but then there was everything about the night that was not ideal. They did not bother dousing their fire: a tip of the hat, almost an acknowledgment of respect to the coming onslaught. They helped her into the canoe and launched. This time, without discussing it, they both got low. They were both on their knees, butts against the edge of the seats, and they picked up their paddles and stroked easily upstream to the top of the eddy and out into the main current and let the river send the bow around in a wide accelerating peel-out, and then they were heading downstream, paddling in tandem, steady, not fast, and they stared ahead intently at the unbroken surface until it seemed their eyes ached, and listened hard for a rush and sift that was of water not fire. The river between the phalanxed woods, the black bulwarks of forest, was something metallic, faintly luminous, and they each wished it would stay that way and knew that it wouldn’t.

The cracks were the scariest. The sounds with no apparent flames. They paddled through an S-turn to staggered gunshots grown closer like an advancing front, which were the bigger trees exploding, and almost immediately they hit a long rapid. They could see the whitewater ahead like the thin line of distant surf, but it was much closer than it seemed and before they could scout a line or intuit one they each felt the waft of cold air and the rush came with it and the bow rocked up into a breaking wave and Jack braced the blade of his paddle into the froth and they were in it. Smack in the middle of the whitewater. They took water over the right side in the first wave but not much, but when they hit the second they took more, the gunwale gulped and she was awash in a couple of inches of ice water. They were heading left, they accelerated. They’d both seen and heard the gnash of a large hydraulic almost straight off the bow, a cresting pale hump that thumped and hissed in a lower register—the trough would be behind it—and they sprinted now, both, Wynn setting the left angle, not in unison, each paddling madly for enough speed to make it past the sucking hole. Wynn thought of nothing but speed, but he watched, amazed, as Maia reached for the cookpot clipped to the strap of the dry bag behind her and freed it and began to bail. She scooped and threw water over the side with her one good arm, with almost professional speed. Damn.

The stern just cleared it. The current accelerated at the left edge of the hydraulic and Wynn ruddered hard off the right side to straighten the boat and swing the stern away and around and even in the dark he looked down into a deep gnashing trough. They were in what they knew to be a ramping rock garden whelmed with whitewater, and the rush was so loud it went silent and they braced to hit a sleeper, the thud of a boulder barely underwater, and the sudden sideways upending, the flip and maybe the awful crunch of Kevlar as the boat wrapped and buckled around the rock…

And then they were by. The fast current and chop funneled down the middle of the river and the gradient seemed to level and they knew without looking that they were in a wave train, a rolling succession of breaking haystacks, and they did look and they could see the pale froth at the tops of the standing crests like whitecaps, and the crashing of water diminished to the discreet song of each single wave, and then the waves were smooth rollers, and then they were released: into the calm flat water of the pool, the metallic sheen of river stretching ahead again, almost placid, an uncertain respite.

She had bailed. Throughout the length of the rapid, and she bailed with one arm now as the current spun them into the flat. Must be feeling a lot better, Jack thought. He turned and said, “Phew.” Loud enough they both could hear. Then: “Hand me the bailer, would ya?” She did. He reached for the soaked shirt stuffed with blueberries and untied a sleeve and funneled the pot full and handed it back. “Fuel,” he said. “We might need it for the next one.”

They let themselves drift, for now. Tugged northward. On their left rose a continuous muffled roar as of storm and turbines punctuated by the pitched whine and pops of pressure cookers as they explode. Nothing to see, still, but a thickening haze. Jack thought it was eerie—the chorus of harsh instruments that should never commingle—and every now and then rose a thin scream exactly like someone being squeezed to death. Squeezed and sizzled to a last tortured hiss and then maybe the crack of a spirit being loosed to the heavens. It was terrible. The wind had backed west-northwest and it brought the bedlam along with rolling smoke that stung their eyes and made them cough. The water was swift and flat for now, at least there was that. Without talking the two picked up their paddles and began pulling the boat forward.

In the last couple of miles the river had widened, it was maybe a hundred and fifty yards across, and almost instinctually they hugged the right bank, away from the fire. Their hands were stiff with cold. Motionless tall trees on either side, still dense with darkness, except over the left treetops now fluttered a glow not bright but bright enough to erase the lowest tiers of stars. Jack held up his hand and Wynn rested. They listened. The jet roar was no longer muffled but rose and fell as if buffeted. Almost as if breathing.

Their throats burned. Jack almost had to yell. “It should lay down at night, but it’s not. That’s weird. It’s plenty cold.”

They drifted. Jack said, “If anything, the wind is stiffer.”

They waited. Both knew he wasn’t done, and both sensed he himself wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. That was almost scarier than the sense of a mega-giant beast thumping closer beyond the wall of trees. Wynn thought of Jurassic Park. He said, “What rough beast…?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“It happens,” Jack called. “A fire disobeys every rule. Anyway, it’s close. No sparks yet or flying shit, there’s that.” Pause. Then: “The river isn’t wide enough.”

He’d said it. With a fire this big, the river wouldn’t act as a firebreak. Nobody had to ask what he meant.

“You can hear it. It’s just big as shit, the biggest fucking forest fire on earth. Right now that’s a fact.” He shook his head, trying to clear it maybe of the truth. “So it’s coming across and the heat makes these crazy swirling gusts and it’ll make its own weather. Little cyclones and windstorms. That’s maybe the gusts we’re feeling now. The head of it. The smoke will get thicker and that’s gas and it’ll roll across the river and if it ignites…well.”

“We’re toast.”

“It’s a flashover. But.”

“But what?”

“I dunno.” Jack had to make himself breathe steadily. He coughed. “I dunno. You know how sometimes a fire runs over some neighborhood and half a block of houses’ll burn and then there’ll be two that stand untouched, and then another block burned down to cinders?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s uneven. It’s not predictable. That’s all I’m saying.”

Wynn lifted his voice. “You’re saying we better be those two houses.”

The smoke did thicken. They hugged the right bank, the main current just along the eddy lines close to shore, and the smoke rolled, so dense the black mirror of the river ahead was clouded as in fog, and then the wind picked up and the smoke was peppered with flying sparks. Sparks first, then shreds like leaves but embered and glowing, then torn rags of bark laced with fire. Wynn thought of strips of burning skin. They flew across in the smoke and they spread and folded and tumbled as they blew and the boat plowed through them. Over the trees—they could still see the wall of trees through smoke like fog—the glow was a fierce and general radiance that pulsed with a redder breathing. It was loud. Whatever turbines roared were just beyond the trees and now they were cut by a sudden whoosh and pop, and then the terrible hissing squeal that Jack knew was a tree’s sap, its lifeblood boiling and pressurized and squeezed through the very pores of the wood.

The sparks and flying tatters were hitting their backs and shoulders now. Wynn dumped the blueberries out of the pot and yelled at Maia to pull up her hood, she did, and he dipped the pan and doused her with water and then himself and he yelled and tossed the pot to Jack.

They needed to get to the bank. It was low along here, it was the shadow of a wall, a cut bank running to three or four feet above the water, running down to water’s edge and rising again like a moldering stone fence. The fire was coming fast and they needed to get against the dirt down low maybe in the water and get their heads in moss or roots, he didn’t know what. As he thought that, he heard another rush beneath the fire: the current was picking up. Holy fuck. The current was gathering speed, and the rush he was hearing had a wholly different key, something whiter, ancient, a violent register but now of water—it too was growing in strength, they were being sucked into the V’d current of another rapid. Jack peered into and through the smoke and flying debris—there were small sticks flying, burning sticks, that couldn’t be good, some not that small—and he could barely see and feel that they were ramping into a rapid and it was a left-hand bend. Fuckin’ A, at least that. A left-turning bend would pull the current to the outside of the turn, to the right bank, away from the blaze. At least that. Jack yelled, “Rapid!”

They grabbed paddles and stroked into the first breaking waves.

All they could do was keep it straight. Let the river pull them to the outside, right, and keep the canoe straight to the current, parallel, so anything they hit they’d hit dead on. Less chance of a flip. Not much to do, but something. They paddled and the first waves lapped over, and in the rolling plumes they strained to see the dark surface—it was broken by pale crashings but not everywhere, they needed to stay out of the holes. They were being sucked to the right, to the turning bank, and the bow reared and bucked and crashed down and they took on more water and she was bailing and if someone, anyone, was yelling they didn’t hear it, it was subsumed in the general roar. And then the burst, ballistic, of a tree exploding, and beyond the scrim of trees, which was only a scrim now, the spruce were backlit and spindled as if by molten sun; beyond them, over the tops, they saw a jet of fire erupt skyward and heard the whoosh and saw a white billow as of steam against a sky no longer dark and then a whoosh and another tree exploded and the tops of the trees along the bank began to burn. It was crowning. Maybe it was awe. The awe of the earth burning to cinders—they could not not look and they missed seeing the hole and the bow reared and plunged into a deep backward-crashing trough. The stem of the canoe half reared again, wildly, clawing out of it, and the seething backwash flung them sideways and it was all water. Water pummeling, the roar gone strangely mute, and Jack tried to grab the boat, any piece of it, and was torn free, he held to the paddle and was shoved and beaten to the bottom. What a hole does: takes you under. Maybe it was deep but his knee struck stone and he was tumbling, knew he was free of the hydraulic, had the paddle, he buoyed up bursting for breath and came clear into a chop of boiling waves but no boulders, good, and the first thing he saw was the trees all along the riverbank catching fire, crown to crown.

Jack was swimming. He looked wildly around and saw that the canoe was right there, capsized and awash a few feet off. He lunged and threw an arm against the water-smooth hull and worked along it to the bow and found the rope. He grabbed it. He put the paddle in that hand and began kicking and swimming hard sidestroke, pulling the heavy boat behind him. Wynn saw it. He was just behind, had held to his paddle, too, the first reflex, and had been shoved to the bottom in the hole and came up thrashing for her and did not see her, and went through a low crashing wave, and when he struck for the surface he came up against her. She was flailing with one arm and choking and he yelled, screamed to flip on her back and she did and he began hauling her hard to the right bank, following Jack. They all three were shoved down into the tailwater, a long riffle, and they were very close to the bank, good, and they got three, then four hard strokes past an outstuck boulder and were in the shore eddy which was wide and calm. No calm for them. They buoyed into the narrow dark pool against a shore of smoothed cobbles and Wynn was shoved against Jack and felt the tug of Maia going past and he pulled her in, and the canoe swung down below them against the bank and Jack yelled, “Get behind it! The boat!” He gripped the bow rope and now he let go of the paddle and pulled the shoulder of Wynn’s life vest, pulled the other two down into him—they were in the shallows, maybe a foot, two, of ice water—and he yanked the flipped canoe up to them and they all heard the rush and saw the entire wall of trees across go to flame. The thick smoke could not obscure it. They could feel the wind. The wind was dense with sparks and flying debris. The canoe was a low redoubt and they huddled behind it, the eddy current keeping it straight to shore, and Jack screamed, “It’s crowning! Heads down, heads down! Faces down in the rocks!” They did. They buried their faces between the cobbles in inches of water and they felt a wind like some demonic thing, like nothing on earth, a searing gust that pummeled the canoe, they could hear the burning wood flail against it, the tick of embers, they were lying in water heads down in the ice runnels between stones and could not help but hear the passing over of hell.

It flashed over. There must have been a change of wind or one measure of God’s mercy. Because it did not bake them or sear their lungs. Not a true flashover or they would be gone. But they felt the hot gusts go over and then they heard the trees above them flare and scream like nothing human but spirit maybe, a singeing, crackling protest, and burning limbs began to break on the gravel bar. Also the wind stopped. The fierceness of it. As of a breath expelled. It was still there, pressing their backs, but no longer malign. Like a hot wind, like the ones that barrel up a desert river in late afternoon. Jack knew. He got to his knees and with one crazy heave he flipped the boat back over. Where was the pot? He’d clipped it to the thwart he was sure, he didn’t see it, fuck it, the boat was awash but they were out of the rapids, the river was a mild riffle now, they had to get across. Back across. Back into the teeth of the burn. Because it was hot and flaming still but across the river it was already burned over, it was blackened, it had expelled its life and so all its ferocity. They had to get there because the head of the fire was on this side now and it was all waiting unburned fuel and it would flare, it was crowning above them, in a minute it would catch the whole bank and start creating its own wind as it had before, and if the wind backed around and the smoke and gases blew back over the water and flashed they could all still cook. The fire on this side could jump back over the river and there’d be nothing left to burn but them. He shook Wynn hard and his head came up and Jack said, “We’ve got to get back in the boat, now! When this whole bank really goes it can cook us, too. Now!” Wynn was dazed but nodded.

She was moaning. Good. She had not choked. Her injured arm had come free, lost the sling, it lay useless beside her. Wynn rolled her over and a burning twig hit her face; her face was wet, thank God, it hissed, he cursed and turned her on her side and said loudly in her ear, “Listen, we will rest soon, we’ve got to get back in the boat. Got to go now.”

Wynn rose and turned and screamed. A burning mat struck the left side of his face. Jack spun. Leaf or bark in flame, and whipped where it fell by the back-gusting wind, it struck the side of Wynn’s face and stuck like a burning hand and he slapped his palms to his cheek and screamed again and stumbled into thigh-deep water and fell in. Jack ran. Wynn was wallowing upward back onto the bank and he was cursing and trying not to touch his face where a raw strip exactly like the sear of a wide grill and curdled with blood cut his cheek from lip to the outside corner of his eye. Jack had grabbed him as he stumbled and Wynn stood and said, “I’m all right. It shocked me. I’m okay. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He didn’t look okay, but Jack thought, He has all his limbs, let’s blow.

The canoe was awash, scraping rock—lucky it had not broken against a boulder. They left Maia where she lay and hauled the boat up on wet stones and under a rain of burning needles and branches managed to roll it and dump the water. The strapped bag and box and slung rifle had stayed in, thank God, but they’d lost the blueberries. There was the little steel pot swinging and knocking against the thwart. Wynn attacked the last few inches of water and bailed fast. Enough. The burning debris rained down, they swiped it off of arms, shoulders, and Jack had to hustle to Maia to kick a burning limb away from her leg—an inconstant blizzard of sparks, bunches of pine needles flaming like flares, birch leaves ignited to molten lace rained down, but the wind had gone quiet, it eddied as if confused, circled around them like a dog settling for sleep, the dense smoke had lightened, the jet roar had yielded to the crackling and shirr of a thousand campfires, it was eerie.

It scared Jack more than the full-on assault, he didn’t know why. He did know: it was because the flash had burned through, the front line had stampeded past, they were just at the edge of a thousand square miles of new fuel ready to ignite, barely behind it, like standing at the tail of a T. rex. The fire was beginning to take hold in the new woods, it was beginning to crown in the tops of the new trees, they had to go. They slid the boat back into the shallows and carried Maia and shoved back into the smaller waves of the tailwater.

They did not look behind them now. They could hear again the gathering whispers, the swooshes and squeals, the cracks, almost as if the fire were questioning its own intentions and the woods were answering: “We have been waiting for you our whole lives.” Less extreme violence now, more a difficult but cathartic conversation. That would change. Jack knew that soon the fire would rediscover its passion for death. They paddled. They did not ferry but angled downstream and across, and when they neared the far shore and Wynn began to turn her straight downstream Jack yelled, “Go to the bank!”

“What!”

“We’re not safe on the river!”

Wynn was beyond questioning. In the wavering light from the burning behind them he saw on the left bank a country out of the Inferno, a shadowed world of stubs and spikes of blackened trunks still running with blue flame, or flaring, a ground charred to mineral dirt and scintillant with embers, and the bank itself was wholly strange: the exposed roots that ran over all these cut banks had burned and where they had embedded were now channels of blackened dirt like the remains of some horrible ant farm. He ruddered hard on the left and reset the angle and took them into a narrow gravel bar. Jack hopped out. He hauled the bow up on the rocks, which were strangely powdered with ash like snow and still hot.

“No rain,” he called. “Not tonight. The river won’t rise—we’re safe leaving it.”

“Leaving it?” Behind them two explosions. They did not turn to look, but the little beach was illuminated.

“Not safe,” called Jack. “Not here.” He did turn now to witness the new slaughter across the water: a straight stretch of river, how the fire was consuming the wall of trees in pockets that ran together, how different pieces surged and died. It reminded him of the aurora borealis he had seen the other night, the great forest beneath the stars seeming compelled to answer.

Wynn climbed out, glanced at Maia, she was awake, good, her eyes were wide and in them he could see a reflection of flames. He stepped up to Jack. On this side were only low hisses, a ticking and chirping, a simmering crackle like a million crickets, hellfire crickets, singing of apocalypse and char.

“What do you mean?” Wynn said. “Where do you think we should go?”

Jack pointed inland.

“There? Are you crazy?”

Jack took Wynn’s shoulders and turned him around. The sections of fire all along the far bank were running together with increasing speed, and they could see the concatenate crownings as treetops burst into flame, see it quickening, the flames jetting higher.

“She will do again what she did on this side of the river,” Jack said. “The fucker’s getting hotter over there, she’s just getting started. Once she makes her own weather she can do all sorts of crazy shit. Like back fully around. She can try to flash back. How wide is the river? A hundred thirty yards? It’s not enough.”

“Fuck.” Wynn blew out the word. “Really? You really think so?”

Jack didn’t answer. He let the spectacle across the water speak for itself. Finally he said, “Wildland firefighters call it running into the black. Back into the black. We won’t run, not with her, but we need to go in there. It’ll be uncomfortable but not so much as getting baked.”

He let it sink in. Wynn nodded, but almost as if he believed he was in a bad dream now and it didn’t matter what they did.