Wait. Maybe that would be a good thing then.
Jump!
I think.
Jump, you freak!
He doesn't.
I scan the bank but see no sign of the eleven o'clock ride.
Where are they?
Suddenly my earlier optimism dissolves. Darren might not be coming out here into the water to get me, but unless someone stops him on the path, he'll be waiting for me when I finally wash up on the shore, gasping and hypothermic.
Unless I swim to the other side, I realize. The First Nations reserve is on that side. Surely I could drag myself out over there and walk to someone's house and ask to use the phone.
I glance at the bank again. He's still there, hopping along. His hands are up beside his face, and he's dancing around like he's in the circus ring. How can there be room for so much craziness in just one brain?
As I watch, he stops for a moment to take out his knife. Then he resumes his twisted dance, waving the knife in the air. His laughter reaches my ears.
He's loving this. He knows he's going to win. I shudder, only partly from the freezing water.
No.
He's
not
going to win.
Still on my back, I angle myself toward the other shore and start to kick.
The water is fast. I fight the instinctive urge to put my feet down on the bottom. We watched a Red Cross video in outdoor education class last year that showed what happens when you try to stand up in a fast-flowing river. They showed a bird's-eye view of a real guy whose foot got caught between two rocks on the riverbed. He got stuck. And the water justâ¦folded him over and held him there. Against the bottom. I was so messed up by watching the accident that I don't remember whether they were able to save him. I just know that the image burned itself onto my brain.
I raise my head briefly to see how much farther I have to go before I reach the other shore. My heart leaps into my throat. A huge sweeper lies dead ahead. The fallen tree leans out over the water. Its roots are still bound by the bank, but its branches and trunk trail on the river's surface. It's a hundred feet away yet, but I know I won't be able to change my line quickly enough to avoid it. I scan the length of the sweeper frantically, looking for a place that's free of branches. Maybe I'll be able to slip through without getting caught.
Because if I'm caught, I'm done. The branches will tangle in my clothes and hair, and they'll hold me in the tree until I drown or freeze to death.
But maybe it wouldn't be so bad to get caught in the sweeper, I reflect.
Because without my hands, I'm going to drown in the rapids ahead.
I don't have a choice in the matter anyway. The river's current swirls me downstream, right toward the dying tree. Time's up. I close my eyes as the water slides me in, under the big trunk.
At the last moment it occurs to me that I could dive down, deep under the water's surface, in hopes of avoiding the branches.
But it's too late. The sweeper snags me and I stop moving. It holds me in its grip. The water pushes furiously against me, rushing in a wave around my head as it tries to drag me along downstream.
I open my eyes. My face is above water. I can still breathe. That's good.
That's amazing, actually. I'm on the downstream side of the sweeper's trunk, floating on my back. The river's force stretches my body out, filling my boots and pulling my feet downstream. My shoulder screams that it's being pulled apart. I kick off my boots. Too much weight.
One boot comes up to float near the surface, half submerged. I watch as it fills with water and sinks out of sight. I glance over at the shore, but I don't see Darren. My heart lurches. Where is he? If I can't see him, where is he?
I'm on the downstream side of the sweeper, nearly free of it. But I'm caught by the rope around my wrists. A stout branch has jabbed itself right in between my hands, under the rope. It impales my wrists against the tree. The branch is on the upstream side of the trunk, and I'm on the downstream side. There's no way I can drag myself upstream enough to bend my elbows and pull my hands off the peg. Not even the Incredible Hulk could do it. The river's pulling at me with about three hundred pounds of pressure. I'm stuck.
Bloodied, battered and completely exhausted, the utter futility of my situation sinks in. My teeth start chattering. I try to stop them. I've experienced the onset of hypothermia before. I know the chattering will feed my panic and will make it hard for me to think.
Think
.
I feel around with my thumbs. Can I hook one under the rope? I twist my hands around in their prison, straining my muscles to feel for a place where I can ease my thumb under. The water has loosened the rope a bit. I'm able to pull one of the loops toward my thumb. I slide my thumb underâ
yes!
I wedge my palm after it.
Lubricated by the rushing water, the loop slides over my hand. I keep poking my thumbs around, looking for the next loop to slip off. Another loop slides free. I feel the rope loosen around both my wrists.
My heart skips out a hopeful beat, but I force my attention back to what I'm doing. I wiggle both hands like an awkwardly jointed butterfly.
Flap. Flap.
The rope slithers away from my hands.
I leave it there, twined around the branch.
The river swings me downstream.
Toward Hell's Gorge.
I've got about two minutes before the rapids start. Plenty of time to get out. I look ahead to make sure there aren't any other sweepers waiting to grab me in their woody embrace. Nope, the water ahead is clear. I angle toward the near shore, toward the reserve, kicking my freezing legs. I paddle with arms that feel like they're made of lead.
I'm pretty close to the edge now.
Suddenly I spot the hole in my plan. The bank isn't grassy or sandy. It's not even gravelly. It's just a wall of rock. And it's, like, twenty-five feet high.
Being the start of a gorge and all.
I don't even allow myself a second of whining at this newest awful development in my day. I'm cold, and I'm growing stupid as my awareness slowly dwindles to a pinprick centered on surviving this crappy mess. I've got to save my mental energy for getting me through the rapids. I can't climb out on this side. And that stupid freak stabber guy is somewhere on the other side. I have no choice.
I have to swim them.
I flip onto my stomach and point my head downstream. I force my arms to paddle as the roar of the approaching rapids gets louder. If I'm going to avoid getting sucked under, I've got to be going either faster than the water, or slower. Without a boat and paddle, there's no way I can control my speed enough to slow down. But I can swim faster than the current.
So I do. I pinwheel my leaden arms and kick hard, trying to keep my head above the surface so I can see dangerous rocks. I've piloted plenty of rafts through this canyon before. But things look different from up high, on top of the water's surface. Down here, things happen fast, and it's hard to see through all the splashing white water.
I'm not sure where everything is, but I remember the major features.
The roar becomes deafening. Then suddenly there's a drop.
I'm in. The thunder of pounding water fills my head. I gulp mouthful upon mouthful of icy water as I hurtle my way through the churning mass of waves. Up, down, under.
My right ankle glances against a submerged rock. I suck in a freezing gulp. My left knee smashes squarely into another rock. I scream and choke.
I paddle harder, lifting my head high to see what's in front of me.
I crest a large standing wave and stare around, planning my line. I'm a quarter of the way through, but the worst is still ahead. I'm pretty sure my kneecap is broken. I kick anyway.
This is such. A bad. Day. My eyes catch a glimpse of a red shirt on the shore and I feel a wave of relief.
Relief? That's kind of twisted.
Yeah, I guess it is twisted. You know things are messed up when you're relieved to see the crazy nutcase who's out to knife you to death.
But if I can see him, at least I know where he is. Better over there than creeping up on me in the water. He's got a huge branch, and he's dragging it along the trail behind him. What the hell is he up to now?
I slip into the trough of one wave and kick up to the top of the next one. I'm in the center channel now, away from most of the rocks, but the most deadly rapid still lies ahead.
The river twists and turns as it slides through the canyon in a fast-moving S-curve. I skid around a corner and experience a momentary thrill. A finger of piled rocks juts out from the shore, almost to the center of the river. I could climb out before hitting the weir!
But as soon as the thought occurs to me I realize it's impossible. I'd be climbing right into a death sentence. Because somewhere over there, Darren is waiting for me. With a knife. And now a big branch.
He's waiting for me to give up. Waiting for me to swim, broken and freezing, to the shore.
I look ahead. Scratch that last bit. He's not waiting for me to come to him. He's going to
catch
me. And he's got himself a big-ass fishin' pole to do the job.
I watch in horror as Darren strolls to the end of the pile of rocks. He's got the big branch slung over his shoulder.
As I watch, he lifts the branch and then lowers it over the water. He's planning to hook me with it and drag me to shore.
And I'm helpless to stop him.
The current sweeps me past the outcropping. He leans out from the rocks, a bleeding monster. He jabs the branch at me, snagging my shirt. I reach back, fumbling. Trying to free my collar from the branch's woody tip. I can't. My fingers are too cold. They won't bend far enough. I scream in frustration and fear.
The water swings me, held fast by the branch, around the point of rock toward the eddy below. If I cross into the slow-moving water of the eddy, Darren will be able to fish me out easily. And kill me. Unless I can somehow stop myself from being pulled to shore.
Either way, I'll probably die. But I'd rather die in the rapids downstream, thanks. And then a thought hits me.
It's a perfect thought, round and bright and easy for my tired mind to grasp. It's scary as hell, but it's the only way I can see an end to this madness.
Without a moment's hesitation, I reach behind me with both arms. I clamp my freezing hands around the branch. I pull hard. With a shout, Darren lets go of the branchâbut it's too late. Yanked sharply off his feet, he lands with a splash in the water behind me. My frozen cheeks stretch into a grin.
Really, it's a pity that he's not much of a swimmer.
Because I'm going to introduce this clown to my treacherous little friend.
The Widowmaker.
Now that Darren's in the river with me, I'm not taking any chances. I want to get as far away from him as possible. I duck my head and pull harder, trying to swim as fast as I can. I kick and thrash my way through the standing waves, closer to the center of the channel. That's where a narrow green tongue of water pours clean over the ledge and doesn't curl back on itself like the rest of the Widowmaker does. If I can ride the green tongue, I might make it out alive.
From below, something grabs at my foot. I scream wildly, kicking out with both feet. I pinwheel my arms and turn myself around, drawing my legs up under me. But it's nothing. Just my mind playing tricks. The thunderous roar of the Widowmaker edges closer now.
Not far behind me, Darren splashes angrily around in the rapids. His mangled face bobs up and down with the current. I wish I could swim away and never see it again.
I realize my fight against the imaginary foot-grabber has taken me off course. I'm not lined up properly to catch the green tongue. Things are moving very quickly now.
Instead of slipping through the safe channel, I slide over a huge ledge and into the foamy hole below. I feel it rather than see it, and dread seizes my heart.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
For a moment I forget about Darren and his knife and his broken face and his desire to cut me apart. As soon as I realize what's happening, I begin to kick and thrash with my legs and arms.
I need to move faster than the water.
I can't get sucked into the hole.
But I can't break away. Panic fills me as the wash pulls me down into the frothy white trap.
“NO! Nooooooooo!” My voice sounds like it's a thousand light-years away.
Thin and muffled around the edges. My eyes bug as I claw at the water ahead of me. “NO!” I kick hysterically, so much that my hips threaten to fly out of their sockets. I scream every swear I can think of, cursing the weir and its single-minded mission to swallow me into its huge hydraulic tumbler. I've seen entire canoes go under this kind of rapid. If I go in, I won't come out until the river dries up or until the Widowmaker spits me out whenever it damn well pleases. It could be hours. It could be weeks. I'll just roll around under the wave with all the other flotsam that it's trapped over the years. Logs. Life jackets. Bits of boats.
Darren.
I sob at this last thought, clawing harder.
And then, inexplicably, I pop free. Gasping and pinwheeling, I shoot away from the deadly rapid and hurtle downstream, still stuck in my churning whitewater nightmare. I piston around and stare, wild-eyed, behind me.
I turn just in time to see something red plunge over the ledge.
Exhausted and afraid to believe my eyes, I stop paddling. I stare, unwilling to take my eyes off the Widowmaker for fear that Darren will pop back up and lunge toward me. But he doesn't. I watch and wait, but he doesn't.
He doesn't.
The river widens and its current slows as the rapids edge out of sight.
My fight against the river has warmed my body, but I'm completely wrung out. I put my head back and drift for a while, listening to the roar of the water as it smashes its way through Hell's Gorge. Amazingly, I seem to be just as unkillable as Mr. Killer himself.