Season of Death (14 page)

Grandfather would also have told him that this was the wrong way to cross a river, Ray thought as he used his boots to anchor himself to the rocky bottom. And he would have been right. One slip and the current would carry him away. But it was too late now. He was already past the halfway mark. Going back would be as hazardous as going forward.

Behind him, Billy Bob was shouting something, his words stolen by the voice of the water. The river’s deep, haunting song was resonating through Ray’s entire being.

Eyeing the kayak, he briefly toyed with the idea of swimming the final meters. No. Entering the torrent had been foolhardy enough. Fighting it with his limbs would be sheer folly. By the time he managed a few strokes, he would be a hundred yards north.

Grappling forward, he noticed that the level was rising instead of falling, splashing up his torso, threatening to reach his chest.
This is dumb,
he told himself.
Seriously dumb. Borderline “Lewis. ‘’ Just the sort of brain-dead stunt the little runt would pull.

Ray paused midstream, trying to formulate a strategy. His fingers were already numb, his toes without feeling. Having ingested a narcotic an hour or so earlier wasn’t helping things.

He was only twenty yards from the kayak now. It was bobbing happily in a protected eddy, one end rubbing gently against the shore. The water was playing at Ray’s sternum, yanking at the backpack. This had to be the deepest section, the main channel. From here on in, it would get progressively shallower. Wouldn’t it?

Two steps later, the question answered itself. It was like walking off a cliff—no bottom, no rocks, nothing but swirling current. He tried to recall his forward leg, but the river grabbed it, spun him around, and lifted him to the surface. Suddenly, he was moving, hurtling effortlessly north: a possession of the Kanayut.

Facing upstream, Ray dog-paddled furiously, struggling to keep his head above water. The shore raced past. Billy Bob became a distant speck.

He felt something graze his right side, felt his boots bump against a hidden boulder. In this situation, you were supposed to flip over and float a river on your back, Ray remembered. That way you could see what was coming and use your feet to brace for collisions with obstacles. But the pack was heavy and awkward. If he flipped, it might pull him under and not let him up. He had to get rid of it.

Unfortunately, the straps were tight. And wet. Virtually glued to his shirt. Every attempt to loose himself from the weight took him down, requiring him to hold his breath.

As he battled the pack, the straps refusing to slide from his shoulders, Ray accepted the fact that he was in trouble. He needed assistance. Immediately. It was time for another venture into the mystical discipline of prayer. So far this trip had been rife with opportunities to draw close to the deity of one’s choice. Whether or not God was real or just a colorful figment of his wife’s imagination didn’t matter at this particular moment. He would welcome help from Yahweh, Jesus,
tuungak,
the river
kila,
Santa Claus, Elvis …

“Help!” he gurgled.

At the same instant, one of the straps fell away. Before Ray could untangle himself from the other, there was a loud, splintering pop, and he stopped with a jolt.

Confused, he blinked at his savior: a fallen poplar. One of its gray, leafless branches had reached out to snatch the pack, and Ray with it. He scrambled along the branch to the trunk, and was hugging it like a long-lost friend when the branch snapped and disappeared downstream. With his boots and pack still dangling in the water, Ray crawled to safety.

When he reached the bank, he collapsed in exhaustion. Wet, out of breath, cold, adrenaline still surging through his veins, he wondered at the near disaster through closed eyes. Why had he blundered into the river? Idiotic. Why had he survived? Incredible luck. Or maybe the hungry
kila
had smiled on him. Or maybe there was something to Margaret’s adopted white religion. Or maybe Elvis had chopped that tree down and …

Ray didn’t care what the reason was. The result was the same: he was alive, out of harm’s way, on solid ground. A five-minute hike and he would be back at the kayak.

The hike turned out to be closer to twenty minutes. Ray’s shaky legs, liquid-cooled body, in early-stage hypothermia, he guessed, and the absence of anything resembling a trail made the going slow. When he finally emerged from the brush, he was in view of the overturned boat. Across the river Billy Bob was sitting on the mudflat, head between his legs, shoulders slumped.

“Hey!” Ray called.

Billy Bob’s bandanna-clad head jerked up. Even from sixty yards away, Ray could see the expressions wash over his face: gloom, curiosity, shock, finally elation.

“Ray!” He jumped to his feet and began whooping. “Ray! You okay?”

“Pretty much,” Ray yelled back. It was an accurate assessment. He had been better. But all things considered … He was thankful to be standing rather than doing the dead man’s float in the Colville.

“What now?” Billy Bob wanted to know.

Ray offered an exaggerated, full-body shrug, before starting for the kayak. He silently hoped that the boat would be empty.

He took a deep breath, then twisted the pointed bow. He could tell right away that the craft was empty.

From the far bank, Billy Bob called, “Where is he?”

“Beats me.” Relief was quickly overshadowed by concern. Lewis wouldn’t leave his kayak overturned. He would beach it. Unless Ray’s original hypothesis had been correct.

He had come full circle, from the dread of discovering Lewis’s waterlogged corpse, to the momentary satisfaction of finding the kayak unoccupied, to the growing sense that something terrible had happened, when he noticed the tracks: waffle patterns in the mud twenty feet up the bank. Ray climbed over a boulder and knelt to examine them. Vibram soles. A pair of hiking boots had exited the water just south of the kayak, plodded across the gravel, and departed into the woods.

Ray tried to visualize the event. Lewis had apparently stopped here, probably to wait for him and Billy Bob, climbed out of the kayak, and moved inland. The boat had drifted downstream a few feet, anchoring itself in the eddy. It fit the evidence on hand. What didn’t make sense, however, was why Lewis hadn’t secured his kayak.

Maybe he had been in a hurry. Maybe Headcase had been chasing him. Or a bear. No. Headcase had been busy elsewhere. And a bear … Lewis wouldn’t have fled from any type of wildlife, especially not on the river. A bear couldn’t catch him. Although … What if he saw a bear or a moose or a caribou and was so excited about bagging it that he neglected to take care of his kayak? Now that made sense.

Ray followed the boot prints to a screen of brush. If Lewis was out there stalking game, it wasn’t a good idea to wander in after him. Not unless he wanted to get shot.

Waving at the cloud of mosquitoes that had descended upon him, Ray stood peering into the first band of alders. The foliage was dense. “Lewis!”

“Do ya see him?” Billy Bob yodeled.

Ray turned and put a finger to his lips. “Lewis!”

Nothing. Brittle leaves trembling in the breeze. Bugs buzzing their wings. The river humming in baritone. Were it not for Headcase’s flamboyant, unscheduled entrance, Ray would have been tempted to believe that they were alone, just he, Billy Bob, and Nature occupying the seven-hundred-mile-long mountain range.

Against his better judgment—the motto of this misguided hunting trip—Ray pushed his way into the bushes. What if they didn’t find him? he wondered. What if no one ever did? This morbid thought was followed by a more practical, immediate worry. What would they do now? Ray was soaked, shivering. It was three in the afternoon. The sun would sink behind the western peak in a few hours.When it did, the temperature would drop twenty-five degrees, from a relatively pleasant sixty to an uncomfortable thirty-five. They had no dry clothes. No dry matches, unless the ones in Billy Bob’s pack had miraculously survived the dunking. No shelter. Not much food. A good twenty miles from the nearest village. Two men, hopefully three, with a single kayak for transportation. An armed dopehead stalking them from the other side of the river …

Bleak. That was the word that Ray’s mind submitted to describe the circumstances.

Ray was chewing this over, when he saw them: a pair of leather Nike backcountry boots. They were one atop the other, at the end of two crossed legs.

Extricating himself from a blueberry bush, Ray stepped to the middle of a level tundra clearing and glared down at the supine figure. Lewis … The goofball was stretched out on his back, using his pack for a pillow, arms folded across his chest, eyes shut, a peaceful look on his face … taking a nap! An empty candy bar wrapper and a water bottle protruded from the pockets of his parka.

Ray kicked one of the boots. “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!”

The lids fluttered and Lewis flinched. He looked up at Ray, dazed. A smile slowly materialized. It was weak, nothing like the self-assured expression he usually wore.

“Eh … You make it.”

“Barely.” Ray was poised to let Lewis have it with both barrels when he realized that something was wrong. Not only was the little twerp lacking his usual arrogance, his breathing was shallow and uneven. “What’s the matter?”

Lewis made an effort to get up. His head tilted forward, he bent at the waist, but something stopped him. He groaned, features contorting in a wicked grimace, before he fell back against the ground.

“What is it?” Ray could see no blood, no wound.

“I go one-on-one with da boulder. First time, I dunk. Second … I get stuffed.”

FIFTEEN

“W
HAT HAPPENED?”

Lewis closed his eyes, as if retelling the experience required great concentration. “I go down. No problem. Real great rapids. Real great. Ho-lotta rocks. Then I sit and wait for you. When you don’t show, I go do rapids again.”

“What did you do? Portage back up?”

“Nah. Dere’s a chute on da west side. Quiet. Big enough for kayak. Maybe raft.” He shook his head in disgust. “Dis time I make mistake. Miss turn. Big rock … Real great big … It jump up and stuff me.” He clutched his right shoulder. I think it broke.”

Ray examined it gingerly. Even through the parka, he could tell that it was swollen. He pressed gently on various bones and muscles, as if he were a doctor and could determine the problem by touch. When he tried moving the joint, Lewis winced.

“Ahh!” Panting at the pain, he said, “Broke, uh? I be out for season?”

“Hunting season’s almost over.”

“No. B-ball season. Fall league.” He rubbed his shoulder, frowning.

Ray frowned with him. Here they were stranded in the middle of nowhere, and all Lewis could think about was how this affected his basketball game. “Can you paddle?”

He shook his head. “Beside, I lose paddle in wreck.”

“Great …” Ray tried to imagine a more pitiful situation. “Can you walk?”

“Sure. Legs okay.”

“I guess we could hike to Kanayut. It’s about what … twenty-five miles? If we follow the river, we’ll hit it sooner or later.”

Lewis sneered at the plan.

“What do you suggest we do, Mr. Expert Guide? Wait for a helicopter?”

This drew an Inupiaq curse. “Upriver ways, we seen Zodiacs.”

“Oh, yeah. Rafts and crates.”

“Not dat far back. Couple two or four miles or so. We be there before dark. They help us. Maybe owe us a boat.”

“You mean loan us a boat.”

“Right. Everything go good, we be meeting Jack. Maybe bag us bull or three.”

Ray blinked down at Lewis. It wasn’t a bad idea, the part about going back to the camp they had spotted. If the camp had Zodiacs, surely they had a radio. Maybe they could arrange an airlift back to Barrow and …

“Where da cowboy?”

Ray aimed a thumb over his shoulder. “On the other side of the river.”

“How you get cross? You swim? Dat why you wet?”

“Sort of.”

“How cowboy gonna get cross?”

“Good question.” He helped Lewis to a sitting position, then assisted him to his feet. Ray took up Lewis’s pack and followed him back toward the river.