The River at Night(23)

“Well, I want to do it,” Pia said. “As soon as I quit my stupid job.”

I smiled as I swam. Pia had been talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail as long as I’d known her, nearly fifteen years.

I pushed myself up and out of the water, dried off with my T-shirt and slipped on my clothes, then stretched out on the bank, a bit tipsy, half listening to chatter about plans for the next several days. My mind slipped back to a recent discussion with Sarah, our new Web developer, about coding. I’d said yes, of course, I get that coding is what makes everything we see online possible, but what is behind the coding? Who codes the code? And so on . . . Isn’t it magic? I’d asked, only half joking. She’d looked at me as if I were an idiot, or worse: boring.

She’d said, “Look, there is no magic. For everything you see, there’s an explanation. You just have to look behind things to see how they work. Open a watch. Take apart a car. There is always a man behind the curtain, pulling the levers; there are no mysteries left.”

I had agreed with her to keep the peace and finish our awkward conversation, but I still wondered. Once one mystery is solved, isn’t there always another lying just beneath?

? ? ?

“Wini . . .” A wet hand shook my arm. “Wake up!”

A spray of night stars. The moon in a caul of cloud.

“We’re heading back.” Rachel’s wet hair hung in tangled ropes, her glasses glinting silver in the moonlight. She stood up and tucked in her shirt, the fabric sticking to her slim torso. A back-to-business feeling coming from her. Nearby, Sandra floated, toes up like a corpse.

I sat up shivering, bits of gravelly rock embedded in my T-shirt. How had I ever fallen asleep this way . . . but the acrid taste of vinegary wine reminded me. I got to my feet, trying to hold on to the enjoyable stage of drunkenness as long as possible.

“Come on, Sandra, let’s go,” Rachel said.

Obediently, Sandra turned and swam the short distance to the edge of the bowl.

“Where’s Pia and Rory?” I asked.

“Not really sure,” Rachel said impatiently. “Rory was going on and on about showing us some sacred Native American place. A little bit upriver. Something about some dog star aligning with Orion’s belt or some crap like that. Pia was all over it.” Rachel hugged herself, the two sharp worry lines between her eyebrows in evidence even in the shadowy dark. “We said whatever, go for it. We’re staying here. I just don’t want to get lost.”

I squinted through the trees. Smoke from our campfire marked the sky, coiling up toward diamond-hard stars. Sandra faced away from us, drying herself with care before stepping into her clothes.

The river glistened black and oily under the moon, frisking over the pebbly bottom with its endless hush. Our way across was lit perfectly by the night sky, less so in the woods where we kept our eyes on the flickering campfire.

We stumbled into the small circle of light. Sparks exploded from the fire’s orange heart and swirled up into blackness. I remembered the box of wine I’d left behind at the oasis, missed it.

Beams from our three flashlights crisscrossed the campsite. Rachel’s lingered on one tent, then the other, before she stepped over and peered inside both of them, lifting the triangular flaps, then dropping them in disgust.

“Pia!” Rachel called into the night forest. “Rory!” The names echoed from the mountains.

Nothing. Just a momentary hush before the chirring of insects surrounded us again.

“Okay, so where are they?” Rachel ran her flashlight across the sky, as if she might find them there.

“Maybe still at the magic place, or could be they went back for another swim,” I said, kneeling by the fire.

“That is not funny, Win.”

I looked up at her. “I wasn’t trying to be.”

Sandra picked up a few sticks of kindling from the meager stash we’d gathered earlier and tossed them on the fire. A whoosh of flame as the dry sticks caught and burned; soft white ashes floated up. “We should get more wood if we want to keep this going all night.”

“Wait,” Rachel said, her face lit red by the new flames. “We’re not going to look for them?”

“He’s a guide,” Sandra said. “He knows the woods.”

Rachel stomped on a glowing piece of bark that had leapt from the circle of stones around the fire. “This is so not cool.”

“They’ll be back any minute, Rache,” I said as if I had any idea.

She jammed her fists through the sleeves of her fleece jacket and zipped it up all the way. “Look, Win, it’s this guy’s job to keep us safe. All of us. All the time.”

I thought about Rory, his ear-to-ear smile in the pool as he looked up at Pia, her arms opening to embrace the night sky before she jumped in to join him.

“We’re safe,” I said. “Let’s get some wood.”

Sandra had already ventured out into the darkness. I pulled on a sweatshirt, shivered, and stepped out of the circle of light. Cool night air lifted up from the earth and mingled with the vapors of water and river stone. Rachel joined me, and we thrashed about in the underbrush, cursing as we gathered what we could.

Which wasn’t much. No one could root out decent wood in the dark, even using our headlamps, so we gathered by our dying fire and huddled in our sleeping bags.