Biting the Moon (30 page)

“ ‘Not in Idaho, they aren't. Anyway, ‘illegal' never stopped anybody, did it?” She picked up the pot of coffee and poured more into his mug. “I just thought, if anybody would know about canned hunts, you would.”

Did Andi think he'd admit to having anything to do with canned hunts? She was trying to navigate extremely dangerous waters. And Mary wondered again if Harry really believed her turning up in Salmon was coincidence. Possibly. He was so arrogant he thought he was untouchable.

She heard him ask, “Now what the devil's a girl like you asking about game hunts for, anyway?”

Andi shrugged. She looked across at Mary and smiled an enigmatic smile.

Mary did not understand that smile. And she had turned it now upon Harry. “Is that what you call them? Game hunts? I guess that sounds better.”

Mary could almost see the question take form in Harry's expression, see the uncertainty take hold. He must have thought it was all an act on Andi's part, a pretense. Andi must be stringing him along for some reason he couldn't fathom. . . .
No,
he could think, reasoning that few adults, much less a young girl, would have that kind of self-control. How could she, upon seeing him, fail to accuse him? (“
It was you! You!
”) How could anyone, especially someone as young as Andi, have this sort of presence of mind? Then she hadn't recognized him; he was right. Something had fucked with her mind, her memory. Fucked it up real good.
Hell, maybe I could do it again.

•   •   •

Mary shook herself. She didn't like the easy way she'd slipped from “he” to “I.” She didn't like it, that she could slip into Harry Wine's way of thinking. And she reminded herself once again that the man could be simply who he said he was.

Graham Bennett came over to kneel down and talk. “That last part was quite a little run, wasn't it? That was some swim you took. You okay?”

She smiled. “Not the first time,” Mary said, with an assurance she didn't feel.

Graham fiddled with a twig, tossed it on the dying fire. “I'll say this about him: he's good. One of the best I've been around.”

“You mean Harry?”

Graham nodded. “That kind of spot, a lot of people wouldn't have had the nerve to head straight for the rocks, but that was probably the only way to get with the current.” He stood up. “You're in expert hands.” His smile was thin and bleak.

That's a comfort, thought Mary. Then she saw that Harry was getting up from his place beside Andi, and she went around to the other side of the campfire.

“Andi, what are you doing?” Mary whispered fiercely.

Surprised, Andi set the coffeepot back on the grill. “I'll bet anything he's got something to do with these hunts. I want to go to one.”

“Why? Jesus, are you crazy? That kind of thing is awful. It's revolting.”

“I'm sure.” Her hand pulled the coffeepot over to trickle into her cup.

“We couldn't get in. Can you imagine them letting two kids in? Or one kid, at least.” She looked hard at Andi. “Not necessarily me.”

Andi didn't answer. She was sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up, stirring up dust with a stick.

Mary moaned and shook her head. “Haven't we got enough to keep us busy? Haven't
you
got enough to think about without adding more?”

Andi didn't say anything; she just went on marking in the dirt.

Her silence made Mary feel wrong, somehow. She guessed there were people like that. Their very presence could make you feel wrong. “You're only guessing.”

“Reuel would know. He knows everything that goes on.”

“Well, he might know some, but not everything.” Mary supposed it was part of Andi's romantic thinking that she could assign such all-encompassing knowledge to someone. She said, “Even if you managed to get in—”

“
We
managed,” said Andi, smiling. Mary ignored that.

“—to see one of these canned hunts, or whatever they are, what could we do? My God, can't you imagine what types would go to those things? I'd be scared being around people that think it's fun to shoot fish in a barrel.”

Andi nodded but kept her eyes on the figure she was drawing in the dirt.

“Well, wouldn't you?” Andi was so exasperating. “What've you got to gain by going?”

Andi was silent for a moment; then, with a little shrug and a constricted smile, she answered, “What've I got to lose?”

The group went about the post-meal cleanup, loading the cooking equipment onto Randy's raft.

Floyd was still to be in the first raft, and Mary watched him as he took his seat again in the stern. He sat, wordlessly and, she could only guess, in a state of utter frustration, in a kind of limbo made worse by his being so close to the man he held responsible for his daughter's death. Mary wondered what kept him from doing something to Harry Wine. Was it because he couldn't be a hundred percent certain? Was there just that nagging doubt, like a tiny blip on a screen, that he was right? Or was it because he was still a civilized man, even out here in the wilderness? Mary looked up at the canyon walls and wondered about Floyd's dilemma. This was his fourth or fifth trip with Harry Wine. Had he taken all of them hoping that he could catch Harry in some questionable behavior that would give Floyd good reason to confront him?

Why hadn't he? Suddenly, Mary knew the answer with the certainty one sometimes does even in the absence of facts: because of Andi, because she reminded him of Peggy. He was afraid for her. It would have been, on Floyd's part, a gut-level response, even though the circumstances were so different. His daughter had been in a kayak by herself. Not so Andi. Surely it would be foolhardy to try anything when there were eight witnesses. If Floyd was wrong, nothing was lost. But if he was right, he wanted to put Harry Wine on notice.

“What're you thinking about? You look so serious,” Andi asked her.

Mary looked around to see if they were out of everyone's hearing. “I was thinking about Floyd Ludens—or Atkins, I mean. I was wondering why he doesn't just beat the holy shit out of Harry Wine.”

“Probably because he's got two boatloads of people here.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

As they walked to the river's edge, Mary saw Ron coming toward them, making his way over the rocks and ledges along the bank. He must have finished his scouting downriver. He went over to the raft
where Harry was handling the line and drew him aside, and she watched them talk; it was too far away for her to hear anything. Then she thought, no, they weren't talking; they were arguing. Ron was shaking his head, Harry was arguing. Ron shrugged and walked away.

Harry waved all of them over, told them, “Ron thinks we should portage the rapid coming up. I say we can either portage or run it. It's up to you. Want some excitement? I'll take whoever wants to go. The others can walk it with Ron and carry the second raft.”

Mixx, the one who'd been such a blowhard about getting into really tough water, was the first one to fold. The ones who said they'd go were Floyd, Andi, and Mary. She didn't want to do this, but she wouldn't let Andi go without her. She had a bad feeling about this run.

Randy and the Mixxes and Graham and Lorraine hauled the second raft out of the water up onto the gravelly bank. From the equipment, Ron pulled out a waterproof bag. “If you're going,” he said, “you might want rain pants, besides the ponchos.” Ron was still wearing that hard look he'd earlier turned on Harry Wine.

Andi and Mary got into the pants and the ponchos. Helmets, too.

Floyd said, his voice tight, “I don't think either of these girls should go.” His thick neck was red, the angry color spreading up to his jawline.

“It's strictly up to them,” said Harry. “They can stay and portage if they want. Andi's seen water ten times worse if she ran the Gauley in West Virginia.” His expression gave away nothing.

“Maybe. But Mary here hasn't.” He jerked his thumb in her direction. “She hasn't got the experience. You shouldn't ought to let them go. I know how dangerous these rapids can be.”

Harry shrugged. “They paid their money, they should do what they want.”

“What did Ron see downriver?”

“A strainer.”

“If he thinks we should portage, well, maybe we should.”

“Look, Floyd,” said Harry wearily, “there's always some danger. But if my customers—like yourself—want a little excitement, then I provide it.”

“That what you call it, a little excitement? Mary's had excitement enough to last her a year.”

Mary wouldn't have been surprised if Floyd had at that moment grabbed Harry by the throat. She wondered how anyone could manage to control such rage. Andi could, but Andi was so cool it was nearly impossible to tell when she was angry. With Andi, it was almost as if she knew that the object of her wrath would get what was coming to him sooner or later, come hell or high water.

It was a terrible burden to carry around—the loss, the rage. She wanted to thank Floyd for trying to look out for her. It grew increasingly clear to Mary that the people Harry Wine wanted on his raft were the people who were going. Except, that is, for Mary herself. But she was probably a cipher; the worst she could do was to get in the way. Or perhaps be a witness for rather than against him. That gave her a chill. She would be a good one. That is, if she didn't get pitched out of the boat herself. For just a moment she felt like a jacklighted deer, possessed by an idea she knew she should free herself from but mesmerized by its light.

They left the others behind to deal with the food and equipment.

In the first half mile of their trip, Mary was so captivated by the country they were going through she could easily have convinced herself that the “others” were a dream. The water was wide and serene, the only thing breaking its glassy surface the
whish-whish
of the oars as they knifed the water. She thought of one of those mirror lakes you see at Christmas, tiny figures gliding on skates across glass. Mary was glad Floyd wasn't a talker. She looked up at the sky, past the canyon walls, deep red, threaded with golden light, and found it hard to believe that this river would soon be slamming them around with a vengeance.

But it would. Coming from up ahead, it sounded like an avalanche. She saw furiously churning water. As Harry shouted, she gripped the sides of the raft. He called out that there was a double waterfall ahead. There was so much of the boiling water that it eclipsed everything but the sky above and the top of the canyon walls. Everything up there looked as if it were shrinking, and she felt trapped in a claustrophobic dream.

A storm of water, a deluge, took them over the first fall, held them up, and then dropped them in a hole. Harry shouted that this was nothing, not to worry. He looked back for an instant, grinning. They swirled
around, he straightened the raft, and they went over the second fall. Water slammed into them, pitching the raft stern up and nearly parallel with the wave. Floyd shouted
Hoo-eee!
out of a pure delight that had certainly been dormant in his heart until now. Mary clung to the sides, feeling for the second time on this trip more exhilarated than scared. As the raft pitched forward into an eddy of foam, she felt the grip of her worries loosen. Right now, they seemed trivial. Perhaps it was this sense of freedom that sent rafters looking for bigger and bigger water.

Mary wiped her arm over her face as Harry called back to them, “That—see there—”

She could see nothing but water rising.

“It's the strainer, a logjam, so for God's sakes keep your helmets on!”

Mary had a moment in which to feel fury that Harry hadn't told them the size of it. Twenty feet from them, a big tree had uprooted and was lying nearly across the whole width of the river, which was narrower at this point. The only way around it was far over to the left-hand side where the branches thinned out.

Andi was half standing, wiping spray from her eyes, paying no attention to Harry shouting at her to sit down. When the clouds of foam cleared for a moment, Mary saw, directly in front of them, a huge black rock, its high smooth face as blank as the entrance to a cave. From what Mary could see through the thick foam clouds, the channels that ran around its two sides looked only a few feet wide, hardly wider than the raft itself. The black slab was getting closer, and she saw water sloshing right up to its top.

Harry wasn't navigating the raft off to one of the side channels; he was heading straight into it. Andi yelled, “We're going to smash!”

But they didn't; a cushion of water took them up and over and dropped them down on the other side. Harry said later that that's what it was called—a cushion—and the only way to get around that boulder was over it.

The water flattened out for a quarter of a mile and they had a chance to catch their breath just before they ran into what looked like house-high standing waves. The boat spun in a circle and Harry told them to start paddling, shouted that they were coming to a series of ledges and pour-overs and they should keep the boat off-center, over
to the right. “Keep me out of the hole at the bottom of the first one,
please
.” He laughed. “And watch out for the undercut rock at the bottom of the second pour-over. Try and keep us in the raft, if possible.”

Up ahead there was a great roar of water and they shot over the first ledge, paddling furiously to stay to the right. Mary saw a fine mist rising along the horizon.

“That's the second ledge; watch it!” Harry called back over his shoulder.

The raft shot over and slammed—
slammed
—down. Mary dropped her paddle to grip the side. For a moment they were caught up in the hydraulics of the hole and the raft tipped to one side coming out of it. They surfaced, and the cloud of water blew away like smoke; it was as if they were rushing from a burning building.