The Journey Back (5 page)

A
big
clunk
startled me. I sat up fast and swiped the hat off my face. The canoe was wedged between two big rocks. I grabbed the broom and started to push off, but there was this strange whooshing noise behind me. When I turned around I saw I was about a hundred yards away from going over a dam.

Whoa!
That would not be fun. I dropped the broom and figured I'd better get out of that canoe fast! Quickly, I took the jackknife and the cash out of my pockets and stashed it all in the little front pocket of the backpack so it wouldn't get wet, then I rolled over the gunwale into the water. I gasped it was so cold! Deep, too. I couldn't touch bottom, which made me nervous.

I got hold of the rope attached to the front of the canoe and wrapped the line around my hand twice so I could pull the canoe free. On my back, one hand holding the rope, I kicked as hard as I could. But BAM! The canoe smashed into another rock.

I realized then that there were so many boulders in the river I could hop from rock to rock pulling the canoe instead of trying to kill myself by swimming. So that's what I did.

On shore, I dragged the canoe to a small clearing and pushed it under some bushes. Then I sank to the ground, untied the soggy jacket from around my waist, and wondered: what next? Keep moving? Hide out for a while? I couldn't decide. First things first. I really needed to pee so I got up and did that. Then, hungrier than ever, I carried the backpack over to a moss-covered ledge hidden by some brush and sat by the river. I was soaked from head to toe, which was downright uncomfortable, so—after taking a good look around—I stripped off all my clothes, except for my underwear, and set everything on one of the rocks to dry. It felt weird, being out there practically buck naked, but I was also glad to get those stinking clothes washed off 'cause every time I got a whiff of garbage it made me kind of sick to my stomach.

Rummaging through the backpack, I decided on two more pieces of beef jerky and five raisins, all of which I laid out beside me on the rock.

While I ate, I thought I'd check the C&O Canal book to see if I could find out where I was. A map inside showed the Potomac River and a line of dashes and dots that were the towpath. Both sides of the river had railroad tracks, too. I found the Little Orleans campsite where I stole the canoe and ran my finger down the river to a bar labeled Dam No. 6. That's where I was, I figured. Above Dam No. 6.

Maybe, I thought, I could pull the canoe around the dam and continue paddling downriver. At some point, I'd start walking the towpath again, but I kind of liked that canoe. Along the way, I'd have to find more food. Some towns were coming up. I still had three dollars in my pocket. But I could also do some Dumpster diving. It wasn't much of a plan, but it's all I could think of just then. That reminded me of the Joker in the movie
The Dark Knight
, saying, “Do I look like a man with a
plan
?” Funny. I loved that movie.

So there I was: a kid with a plan, beside a canal, and out of the blue, this pops into my head:
A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.
I smiled, recalling how that was a palindrome. It's the same thing, forward and backward. Like the name
Hannah
, or the words
racecar
,
nun
,
and
toot.

Ha! Me and my friends used to have fun with oxymorons:
jumbo shrimp, pretty ugly, plastic silverware
. But if you ask me, we had even more fun with palindromes.
Madam, I'm Adam.

Still grinning, I turned my face up toward the sun.

Don't nod.

I chuckled. There was a kid at my middle school named
Mike Kim
. His whole name was a palindrome!

Boy, my mind sure wandered, didn't it? It was right about then that I heard whimpering in the bushes. Little, high-pitched whimpering sounds. Startled, I swung my head around to see who was there, but all I saw was a squirrel frozen halfway down a tree. Standing up, I scanned the riverbank. Nothing toward the dam. But a small motion upstream caught my eye. Like a little furry hand, waving.

Barefoot and with just my underwear on, I carefully picked my way over a few rocks to get a better look. It was a dog. A little gray dog lying on its side. It was stuck somehow and its tail was flapping up and down.

“Hey, buddy,” I said calmly. “You okay?”

When he heard me, the little dog whined and his tail started thumping like crazy. I crept closer and saw a clothesline had been wrapped around its neck and that the line was tied to a small tree that was caught up in the rocks. The dog was drenched to the bone, his tongue was hanging out, and his head could barely move on account of the rope was so tight.

Kneeling down, I touched him softly on the side. “It's okay,” I told him. I wondered what kind of lowlife would tie a rope that tight around a dog's neck.

“I'll be right back,” I promised.

I returned with the knife so I could free him. There was no collar or anything on the dog. Maybe he'd run away from a bad situation—like me. When I finished cutting him free, he tried to stand up but couldn't, and I had to help him. When he finally got his four legs square under him, he shook himself off and licked his chops. I thought he was gonna bark, but he started gagging instead. He coughed up some water, then hobbled toward the river to take a drink.

The dog was really skinny, like you could see his ribs under his gray fur. When he finished his drink, he gazed up at me with water still dripping from his mouth. He had a cute face with dark eyes and ears that sort of flopped over.

“Don't get any ideas,” I warned him. “I don't want no dog trailing after me. I don't have any extra food.”

But the dog didn't trot off.

“Go on. Go home!” I ordered, pointing upriver. I even kicked dirt at him.

Still, the dog didn't budge.

Great, I thought, rolling my eyes. What did I get myself into this time?

I returned to my backpack and sat down to eat the two snacks I had laid out.

Of course you know what happened, right? Exactly. The dog followed me and sat in front of my face looking so starved and hungry that I gave in. I gave him a nice piece of the beef jerky, which he didn't even chew, just swallowed whole. That did it. I was
not
gonna waste food on a dog that didn't even taste his food.

I tried to ignore the dog. I finished the jerky that I laid out, and the raisins, too, one at a time. But the dog just sat, watching me. When I laid down with my hands behind my head to take a rest, the dog stretched out, head on his paws, beside me.

My mind is always jumping around and I started thinking about random things again. Like how I didn't want a dog, and even kicked dirt at it, but how I also fed it and so now it was lying down beside me. I was like a palindrome myself, I thought. Forward and backward all the time. There was no direction in my life. I wondered if that's what religion did for people, straightened them out so they'd know what direction to go in all the time. Plenty of times I wished I had religion like J.T., who read the Bible and went to church regular, including at Cliffside where a minister from a nearby church preached in the dining hall Sunday mornings.

Even Abdul, the boy who slept in the bed beside mine back in the dorm—and the first Muslim person I ever knew—made me envious sometimes 'cause he seemed so calm, and had a real purpose in his life, which was praying five times a day. First thing Abdul did when we come back from dinner was get out his black rug and go out into the room where we lined up our laundry baskets. It was the only place he could go for privacy. They stopped letting him wear his hat, his kufi cap, because the other boys gave the counselors grief about it, like why couldn't they wear a hat, too? But Abdul was cool about it. He told me it didn't matter to Allah whether he was wearing his kufi cap. What mattered was what was in his heart. . . . Although I did wonder what Allah thought about all the shoplifting Abdul done to get himself into Cliffside.

I don't know. I wished I had religion sometimes 'cause I wanted to believe there was someone or something big enough to reach a hand in and fix things up. But it hadn't happened in my life yet. So I could never decide what to think about God. It's like I wanted to believe in
something,
but I didn't know what.

I opened my eyes then and saw a huge “V” of geese honking their way across the sky. The birds were so high up they looked like tiny dark spots in a big ocean of blue. It was late September—were they coming or going? The sun was so bright I had to close my eyes.

Do geese see God?

I smiled.

Another palindrome.

“T
hink of the other person,” Mr. R. was telling us one night as we sat around the campfire. “Before you lash out or say something nasty, think of how your actions will affect that other person.” He never gave up on us. I had to admire Mr. R. for that. “TOP thinking,” he called it. “Think of the Other Person.”

He would have been proud then, 'cause I was indeed thinking of the other person. I stared through the flames at my old friend J.T. As usual, his head was down, but when he glanced up I caught his eye. Was he coming with me or what?

I couldn't tell. So in the darkness, I rushed to get a place in line right behind him. “What's your answer?” I asked softly, close to his ear.

“Stupid!” he hissed as we headed back to the dorm.

I didn't know if he meant that I was stupid, or the idea was stupid.

He turned his head slightly. “Why do you have to go and run anyway?”

“I told you why. I gotta protect my mom and the kids.”

“How are you going to do that? Your dad's bigger than you are.”

“Not by much. If I have to, I'll use my baseball bat for protection.”

“What?” J.T. turned all the way around and stopped the line. “That bat I gave you for your birthday?”

“If you were a real friend, you'd come with me,” I said quickly.

“Yeah?” he spat back. “If you were a real friend I wouldn't be here in the first place!”

Did he pull back his hand to hit me?

“Yo! What's going on back there?” Mr. R. hollered.

I threw up an arm to protect my face—a dog barked—I woke up!

My eyes flew open. It was a dream. Only a dream. J.T. didn't know I was going to run. And of course he wouldn't have gone with me—I wouldn't have asked! But his words echoed in my head:
If you were a real friend I wouldn't be here in the first place!

The dog barked again. I rolled over and followed his gaze. Some bikers were stopped on the towpath across the river. Had they seen us?

“Shhhhhh!” I scooped up the dog in my arms and held his muzzle shut. “You want to get me turned in?”

I sat there in my underwear, holding the dog, and looked down at my clothes, still drying, on a rock close to the river. Boy, was that dumb, I thought.

When the bikers left, I let go of the dog and scrambled down to get everything. The pants were still damp, but I put them back on anyway and, staying low, returned to the canoe to fetch the backpack. It was late afternoon by then and I was hungry again. I knew I should have rationed out the food but I didn't have the willpower. I ate the second Clif bar, then drank the second bottle of water, figuring I could refill it with river water if I had to.

At dusk, I pulled the canoe out from under the bushes and dragged it through a tangle of thickets and over rocks until I was past the dam. The water made a ton of noise pouring over that dam. It was only like a five-foot drop, but it would have swamped me for sure.

I walked to the edge of the river and refilled the empty plastic bottle, hoping the water wasn't full of pollution or tiny bugs or something. Then I closed my eyes and chugged the entire thing. It didn't taste bad, so I refilled the bottle for later.

Lucky for me, there was still some moonlight left. When it was time to go, I pulled the sweatshirt on, but kept the jacket tied around my waist. I stuffed my socks into my boots and tied them to the backpack. Then I rolled up my pants and waded into the river alongside the canoe.

Behind me, the dog whined softly. I'd hoped to get away quick 'cause I felt bad about leaving him. But with all that whining, I gave in and went back to shore briefly to scratch his head. “Sorry, bud,” I told him. “I can't take you. You gotta go survive on your own now, okay?”

The dog held up his paw, like for me to shake it.

“It was good to know you, too, bud. You'll be all right.”

Then I turned, quickly pushed the canoe farther out, and hopped in. I didn't look back until I was a good ways out. The dog was just sitting there, a dark spot on the moonlit shore, like he was waiting for me to return again. I felt a twinge in that hard ole heart of mine. But what was I going to do with a dog?

I faced forward and kept paddling.

Even with the moonlight, it was hard to see things on the river and occasionally I'd hit a rock or ram into a log. A broom doesn't make a great paddle. I used up a whole lot of energy making very little progress and got plumb wore out doing it. The bristles in the broom started falling out, too. The more I paddled, the less broom I had. I took off the sweatshirt— I was so hot—and sat for a while with the broom across my lap letting the canoe drift with the current. Sometimes, the current would spin me around and I'd go backward.

One time, while I was drifting, my eye caught something running along the shore. A fox maybe? A deer? I kept my gaze fixed on it and shook my head when I realized it was the dog.

Crazy mutt, I thought. He didn't give up easily.

Next thing I knew, the dog was barking his head off. I squinted, but couldn't quite see him anymore and wondered if he'd run into a raccoon or a skunk—or a possum maybe. Possums had sharp teeth and could be pretty nasty. I thought of going in to shore to help him, but then I heard a funny, vaguely familiar sound. The canoe was kind of sideways so I turned to look forward. Unreal—but another dam was coming up fast! I couldn't believe it was happening
again!
No time to haul butt over to the side of the river—I was going
over
this one!

In the two seconds I had I reached forward to grab the backpack and clung to it like it was my lifeline. Then together—me, the canoe, the backpack, the broom, everything—we went sailing over that dam.

The canoe swung around at the brink and then plunged into the river below straight down, like an osprey diving for fish. The water hit me hard and took away my breath. I struggled in that dark, cold water, kicking my feet and thrashing like crazy until I broke through to the surface.

Gasping for breath, still holding on to the backpack, I tried to swim off so I didn't get sucked under again. Beside me, the canoe popped to the surface, bottom side up, like a dead fish. I reached for it, but the hull was too slippery. With nothing to grab on to, I had to give up and watched it float away, moving fast down the river. In the dark, I soon lost sight of it.

My instinct was to swim toward shore, but I already knew how strong that current was so I didn't fight it. I simply went with it. Holding on to the backpack made it more difficult, but I wasn't ready to let go. I could have untied the jacket from around my waist to lighten me up, too, but I felt like I needed to keep moving my arm to keep me afloat. In the end, I just let myself be carried downstream like one of those old tires I saw earlier. Boy, I could have used one of those tires right then!

Cold, and drifting with the current, I felt myself grow weaker. Every once in a while I'd try to rest my arm, the other arm holding the backpack, and just float on my back, but I would have to admit that I was getting worried.

Suddenly, this animal came toward me in the water. I didn't know if it was a beaver or a giant otter or what. And then I realized it was the dog. The dog was swimming toward me!

“Hey,” I murmured. When he got close, I grabbed him, but ended up pushing him under the water. I let go right away and he popped up, shaking his head and sputtering water. I didn't try again 'cause I knew I was too heavy for him.

“Go on,” I said. “Go back.”

Right away, the dog turned to swim away. Guess he realized what a mistake he'd made. But as he paddled off, I kind of reached out and lightly took hold of his tail. It must've taken all the strength that little guy had to pull a human being like me through all those currents to the shallow side of the river. But he did it and it was a miracle. A bona fide miracle as far as I could tell.

As soon as my feet started hitting rocks I let go of the dog's tail and crawled the rest of the way out of the river. The rocky bottom hurt my hands and knees, but it also felt good to have something solid beneath me. Breathing hard, heart pounding, dripping wet, shivering, I was a mess. I collapsed on shore with my face pressed against the sand and one of my arms still hooked through one of the backpack straps.

The dog came over to lick my face, but I was too wiped out to thank him. When I did finally push myself up, I saw the dog was curled up right beside me. He saved my life, he did. So he was my friend now. A
real
friend. Right then, I did three things: I gave that dog a good, long two-handed head scratch. I named him Buddy. And I reached into that soggy backpack and gave him the rest of the organic beef jerky.