The River at Night(39)

Rory looked like a forest mummy under his encasement of tumbled stone and pine boughs. Pia and Rachel stood over him, arguing.

“Of course I know his last name. It’s Ekhart. Rory Ekhart.”

“We have to cover his face, Pia, for the same reason we had to cover his body.”

“Then let me do it.” She wiped the sweat and mud and tears off her face with the backs of her hands. She knelt near his head, gazing down at him the way a mother might over her dead child. Ants had found him. They mapped the poreless skin of his forehead and cheeks. She did her best to brush them off, then arranged leaves like puzzle pieces over his face, finally covering those with smaller flattish stones she’d collected by the river.

“I’d like to say some words,” she said as she got to her feet. “In case we don’t get back here.”

Rachel looked away, in exhaustion or impatience or disgust I couldn’t tell, as Pia tilted her head at the forest grave.

“Rest in peace, Rory Ekhart. Who knows what kind of man you would have grown into. I’m sure you would have been a good man, and the world is less without you in it.”

Then we left him. Quietly, in soldierly order, we filed down to the river to make our plan.





24


No one has anything? Are you sure? Check all your pockets,” Rachel said.

Guiltily I rooted around in all the zippered and Velcro-ed compartments in my vest and shirt, turned my shorts pockets inside out. I shrugged. Sandra extricated a mint-flavored Chap Stick used down to a nub, Pia a travel-size foldout brush and waterlogged hair band. Rachel had exactly nothing. We gazed at our depressing stash arranged on the flat rock we stood on, then returned everything to our respective pockets.

“Rory’s map,” Pia said. “If we just had that. I’m trying so hard to remember it.”

“Well, we’re at the Royal Flush, we know that. So we’re fifteen miles from where we started, with thirty more to go on the river. You know,” Rachel said, “we should just hike back upriver to our first camp.”

“I don’t know,” Sandra said, sitting down on the ledge we stood on. She pulled her arms and legs in, tucking herself under the two vests like a turtle. “Going downriver was ridiculous just now. Why would going upriver be any different? Either way, it’ll take us forever to get anywhere.”

“But at least we know where we put the raft in the river this morning.” Rachel squinted into the last rays of sunlight. “Think about it, wouldn’t you recognize that place?”

We nodded dully.

Rachel continued excitedly, “We get there and then look for that logging road right near the camp. We find that fucker and we’re out of here.”

I watched the river rushing by and tried to conjure that very morning, so many eons ago, when we pushed off from a narrow, sandy bank that looked like hundreds of sandy banks we’d passed on our way to the one yards from where we stood. Just a blur of forest and water and terror and death.

“I’m so thirsty,” Sandra said. “I can’t think I’m so thirsty.”

“Everybody’s thirsty.” Rachel put her hands on her hips. “We don’t have the purification pills.”

“I know.” Sandra pushed herself stiffly to her feet and made her way down to the water that surged beneath the rocks we stood on.

“What are you doing?” Rachel said, following her. “Don’t drink that. Get back up here.”

“Don’t talk to her like that.” Pia slipped her a sharp look. “Besides, for crying out loud, how bad can it be?”

“You could get sick! Really sick. You never know what took a crap upstream or what died. Some animal could be lying in the water decomposing. . . .”

Pia jumped down a set of natural stone steps to a place with enough room to kneel. Sandra lay on her belly, splashing her face and scooping water up into her mouth.

I got up.

“This is nuts,” Rachel said hoarsely. “You’re all going to shit yourselves to death.”

“So what? At least we won’t be thirsty.” I practically ran down to join the others. The water tasted like slate, algae, sunlight. I couldn’t get enough of it. I gobbled it up; drank to the point of nausea before I lifted my head, dizzy, my vision blurring for a moment before my thirst headache began to dissipate. The forest looked monstrously heavy in the lowering light, seeming to sprout more green before my eyes. I felt it waiting to engulf us, ingest us. One water shoe badly torn, Rachel limped down to join us on the lower rock stair but did not take a sip of water.

“It’s crazy to go back the way we came,” Pia said between gulps of river water. “Plus, we’d be climbing uphill. The raft has to be close by.”

“We don’t know that,” Rachel said. “What if it’s washed another twenty miles downstream? Then we’re fucked!”

Pia came up to her elbows, seemed to think it over. “We’re more fucked if we try to go back and we can’t get to where we started. Look”—she got to her feet—“whatever decision we make, it has to be the right one, do you know what I mean? There’s no time to make the wrong decision. It could kill us.” A few horrible moments for that to sink in. “And come on, Rachel, really, do you remember it that well? Where we put in? Would you recognize it?”