The River - 1. Chapter 1

The River

The sound of water flowing. Ronnie finally breathing quietly, nestled in my arms for warmth. Summer nights in Texas are still chill when all you’ve got to keep you warm are a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

I’m surprised he’s able to sleep at all, but fatigue finally outweighed all the apprehension and fear, and it’s hours ‘til dawn yet. Not for the first time, I wish for the moon to shine, or the clouds to part, so we’d have some light, just to see where we are. If this were a camping trip, we'd be over-equipped, but it isn’t. I thought we’d planned well enough; no, wait. I thought Ronnie’d planned well enough. I left it all up to him. After all, this was his idea, start to finish. What, where, when, how, it was all his fault. No, that’s not fair. I could’ve shown some interest in the planning, and I could kick myself for not doing it. “It’s your own effin’ fault,” I told myself over and over, “You know better than to leave something, anything, to somebody else. Blind faith just blinds you.”

A couple of hours ago, I was finally able to climb out of the boat. For what had seemed like hours, I’d watched my situation worsen. We’d pulled up to a bank, Ronnie had jumped out of the canoe, and the boat had been swept back out into the current. With only one paddle in the water, the boat swung out cross-current, and the boat was hit broadside, forced into the branches of the fallen tree, gunwales moving closer and closer to the water’s surface. I had to lie down, or the boat would have tipped and gone completely under in a second. Under the tree’s branches, I couldn’t reach the trunk to pull myself up and out.

Suddenly, Ronnie’s hand shot down and took the canoe’s lead line from my hand, then reached down again and grabbed me by the wrist. He’d shimmied out on the fallen tree far enough to help me get a grip and pull myself out of this mess. I scrambled up onto the tree trunk and over to the river bank, turned and faced where I thought he stood, reached out, and pulled him into a hug, still trembling. “Thanks,” was all I could say, and pulled the boat up onto the bank, then collapsed where I was, looking around in the failed light. “We’re not trying to go any further.”

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“Hey, Memorial Day weekend is coming up. Do we have any plans?”

“Nope. Got something in mind?”

“Yeah, let’s take the canoe and float down the San Bernard. I’ve been studying the map for a couple of weeks, and there’s a nice stretch that should be pretty tame. We should be able to cover it in half a day. The take-out point is where that big cypress is, right near I-10. We drove over there last weekend.”

That’s always how these things get started. Ronnie’s pretty adventurous, but in ten years, he’s never steered me wrong on one of these weekend trips, and there always seemed to be a chance to play in the woods, the mountains, on the banks of the Neches River, you name it. There’s nothing like sex outdoors. I didn’t care if it was 15 degrees out, or a frog-choking rain was coming down, pants were coming down when we were alone.

So, anyway, the plans were laid. We’d take both trucks to the take-out, leave one there, then carry the canoe upstream on the other truck to put in. It seemed simple enough – just float on the current. We just didn’t plan on what we found on the river.

As far downstream as we could see, it looked like a lazy river, broad enough and deep enough to paddle. Ronnie looked at me and shrugged; I shrugged back. We walked back up to the truck to unload the boat and a few supplies. Not a whole lot of stuff, seeing as how we’d only be out for a few hours.

“Hey, aren’t you taking your clear lenses?”

“Nah, it’s too bright, and I don’t want to risk losing them. I wouldn’t be able to drive back without ‘em.”

We started out with our life jackets on, but soon shed them in the gentle current. “Let’s just take it easy, and take our time. We’ve got all day to get to the truck.” The boat slid through long, thin lagoons, no more than a couple hundred yards across, where large cypress trees lined the sides and an easy silence muffled the sounds of the paddles, stroking softly. “It always surprises me it’s so much cooler on the water. If we were in town, we’d be sweating like stuck pigs.”

“No,” I said, “I’d be curled up on the couch in front of the TV, hiding from the heat.” Ronnie laughed at me for a minute. His shoulders shook as he paddled, and I just admired the view, in and out of the boat. Canoeing had bulked up his shoulders, so they matched his arms.

God, how many times had I heard him say, ”Breaking my leg was the best thing that could ever have happened to my arms. Eighteen months on crutches. It’s tough to climb stairs, and they almost wouldn’t let me in a bar in Castro.” Then he’d show me the scar again, and my mouth would go dry.

Scars can be horrible, they can be cute, but they each have a story. His was a rugged one on the outer thigh, that stretched from a few inches above the knee to just under the hip joint, where it would disappear under his boxers. Nearly half an inch wide, they’d had to use a saw to open up the muscle. Ronnie’s not tall, but he can press over 650# with his legs. He was lucky to have the use of his leg after the wreck, but now, he could walk as far and as fast as me. From time to time, he’d beg me to massage it, and break down the deep scar tissue. Usually, that was just an excuse to start, well, never mind.

It wasn’t long before the view changed, when we went through the first narrows, with a quick current over the cypress roots. It took some concentration to get through, shifting paddles quickly from hand to hand several times, pulling the boat quickly through the twists and turns. Getting through that first rapid got our pulses up – making it to quieter waters beyond made us both too cocky.

The first few times, the river would let out into a smaller lagoon, before going through a longer tangle of cypress roots, with barely enough water to float the boat, or so shallow we had to push the paddles down against the tangles to lift us up enough to move us a few inches forward at a time.

We had been paddling together for years, going into the swamps looking for gators and watching the birds. We started when the city got too big, too loud, and too crowded, and soon found a number of places near town that were absolutely quiet, with nobody around. We’d seen river otters playing in Old River, diamondback water snakes poking their heads up like little periscopes from murky swamps, coyotes prowling the banks, foxes, bobcats, and lots of alligators. We’ve watched loons diving and golden eagles soaring on a thermal, spiraling out of sight. We’ve paddled through whitewater more than a few times, and knew how to handle a boat. I guess we thought we could take some things for granted.

Motivations

Folks often ask why I like to paddle in swamps. There are lots of reasons. Exercise. Escape from the pressures of daily life in the city. It’s a pretty quick way to get away from a lot of people. It’s cooler on the water, especially on a bayou or on a cypress-lined lake. Mosquitoes are less of a problem on the water than on the land. And the wildlife viewing is extraordinary.

Between Lake Charlotte and the San Jac River is a body of water called Lake Pass. From where we put in, it’s an upstream paddle on the river, and sometimes there’s quite a bit of current. By the time we get to Lake Pass, we’re already warmed up.

For such an insignificant stretch of water, Lake Pass is one of the prettier places I’ve been. There’s one stretch we call the cathedral, because of the cypress trees growing on the banks. They line the banks, some leaning over the water like gothic arches. The lines of the tree trunks draw the eye upward, and in the summertime, the light filters through the canopy overhead, dappling the water, and you’ll often spot red-eared sliders and juvenile alligators sunning themselves on the low overhanging branches. In the fall, the rusty foliage contrasts sharply against the blue sky above.

Anyplace you look, you can find something magical. The owls drifting silently from tree to tree occasionally break the stillness of the day with their cries. Woodpeckers hammering out their hunger, the solitary flight of a raven, a group of hawks wheeling and circling in a stunning display of life and a celebration of being. And it all changes with the seasons.

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That river gets shallow in places. It winds a lot more than the maps show, and there’re deadfalls – fallen trees stretched across the whole width of the river, so low to the water that we had to lie down in the bottom of the boat to pass. Beetlejuice had been on TV the night before, so suddenly I hear this tenor voice singing out, “Day-O, oh oh Day-ay-ay-o. Daylight come, and me wanna go home.” “Come Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana. Daylight come, and me wanna go home,” I’d sing back to him, as the current carried us along. We lost count of the number of times we had to portage around some obstacle or other. Another deadfall, “Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch…” At one point, we hurled the canoe like a battering ram to clear a crawlway through a solid curtain of mustang grape vines. Yellow jackets didn’t like that, and they swarmed us. “SON OF A BITCH! JUMP IN AND PADDLE!”

In places, the air was so still, we could barely breathe, the humidity thickening the air. The buzzards were never totally out of sight. Water moccasins were spotted in a few places, lazily sliding on the flats or swimming back and forth in the still water. Then suddenly, we’d find ourselves in a current, sliding past the banks as fast as I could jog, a steep 6’ above us. Except for right in front of us, where a large pine had fallen from the bank. Roots still in the ground, spanning beyond the opposite bank, a good 90’ away. The roots bared from the tree falling, having taken out part of the near bank, the trunk was no more than a foot off the water all the way across.

Backpaddling hard to slow us down, gasping, we approached the tree, flattened ourselves to the bottom of the boat, and using our hands, walked the boat under the trunk to the other side. Over the next mile, we saw a couple more deadfallen trees, then came to a bend in the river where several trees had been felled and left straddling the river. Where there was once a pine forest by the water’s edge was a lawn, 300 yards up a shallow rise from the water’s edge to a house. Tough to believe somebody’d cleared the woods so ruthlessly, leaving so many scars on the land. But we paddled on, sometimes over, sometimes under or around, and we finally got to a clear stretch of water.

The bank wasn’t too high, if we just had a handhold. It had been a couple hours since we stopped, and we needed to rest and relieve ourselves. The current was slight, so I eased us up to the bank. Ronnie saw a likely root to try to grab so he could pull himself up onto shore, climbed up on the canoe’s gunwales and reached up – and the root moved. It slithered away. Ronnie almost fell back into the river, but caught himself, and barely kept from tipping us into the water.

You know that laugh that somebody gets when they’re scared out of their wits? The quietly hysterical gasp that wracks their whole body? Ronnie was making that noise, and couldn’t take a good breath for a couple of minutes. He turned to me finally, and choked out, “Cottonmouth.” Crap! They can be pretty aggressive, but this one just wanted to get away.

“Oh fuck.”

We paddled further downstream. Always further downstream. Quietly talking from time to time, just a few words between us, we both began to get uneasy, wondering how much further we had to go. It was like Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole - the further we fell, the further we moved from a reality we’d taken for granted. Every dip of the paddle, we wondered if we were going toward our salvation or some new challenge.

We kept looking for the power lines that crossed over the river near the end of our route, expecting to find them just around the next bend. That was going to be our sign that we were nearly at the end, and we were ready for it. But time kept passing, and we never saw the power lines. “How many switchbacks can this river make?” “Shouldn’t we be seeing some sign of the power lines by now.”

Watching the sun wheel westward, we picked up our pace for over an hour, but it didn’t seem long until the sun lit only the taller trees, then only the very topmost branches. My prescription sunglasses were doing more harm than good, so I took them off and squinted into the deepening gloom. The best I could do was see Ronnie in the front of the boat.

I know people born and raised in the city don’t know silence or darkness. If you’ve never been in the woods after the sun goes down, you can’t imagine how dark it got and how fast. Ronnie was peering ahead in front of the boat. He didn’t dare pick up a paddle; we’d get going too fast to correct for anything we met.

We heard it first – the sound of swift water. We sensed more than saw the banks closing in, no more than 30’ across, but overgrown. Finally, Ronnie saw the deadfall strainer. The tree had about an 8” trunk. It had died and fallen across the river, with its branches reaching down into the water. They’re called strainers when their branches trail in the water ‘cause they strain out anything solid on the current, and they’re dangerous. The branches can force you under water, further and further, as the current carries you deeper into the branches and further from air.

“We’re not trying to go any further.”

Taking stock of our situation, it was clear we couldn’t go on tonight. Ronnie’s cell phone, somehow, picked up a signal down in that hollow at the river’s edge. Don’t ask why or how, but I always remember phone numbers in an emergency, so I dialed my sister’s house. My snarky brother-in-law thought I was making a joke as I explained what was going on and where we were. Finally, I got him to hand the phone to Renae, “Hey, I need to ask a huge favor. Can you drive to my house, feed the dogs, and let them go outside for a few minutes? We’re not getting out of here tonight.” After explaining that a search and rescue party wasn’t called for and promising to call in the morning, we hung up, and the darkness closed in again.

Out of water, we sucked on ice cubes left in the cooler, and ate the last of our snacks. I was able to make a tiny fire, just 6” across, but that didn’t last long, since we didn’t dare wander around in pitch blackness. Ronnie tried sleeping in the canoe, but soon gave that idea up, and stretched out next to me on a small, smooth spot on the bank, our feet stretched over the flowing water. In the blackness, my mind wandered, and I heard Ronnie sobbing softly. Turning to face him, I reached out and gathered him against me, spooning his back to me, as he quietly breathed, “Thanks for not blaming me.” How could I tell him I had been, just 5 minutes earlier?

“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to be ok. At first light, we’ll get started, and we can’t be too far away from the takeout point.” I’m not going to hurt somebody if I can help it, and felt like an asshole at that moment for even thinking it.

It got quiet again, and I started thinking about how this would sound in a story. I kept wondering why I would do this sort of thing, running over my reasons, drafting in my mind through the night, hoping to write the prologue if I ever got back to a computer.

I woke to a chattering sound, disoriented by the darkness. Feeling Ronnie next to me, I fixed on the direction of the noise, and finally figured out it was a raccoon, fussing because its river bank was occupied. We were both exhausted, and soon fell back into a fitful doze. At some point, a feeling of disquiet made me stir. I felt Ronnie move, as he whispered, “There’s an alligator between my legs.” Normally, that would be a come-on if there ever was one, but not now. He was dead serious, and whispered, his voice quivering, “What do I do?” Reaching to my side, I handed him a paddle, and he smashed it down on an alligator that I guess was about 7’ long. There was a crash and a splash, then just the sound of water flowing. We just lay there in the darkness waiting for morning after that. Or a violent death. I was so numb, it didn’t matter much which one came first.

False dawn came, and we stirred, taking in our surroundings. That little clear spot on the river bank was slick. The raccoon tracks were plain to see; it had been a family with 2 young ones. But that’s not what caught our attention. The gator tracks practically glowed in our eyes. Alligators will slide back and forth, creating a hollow in the mud, turning the mud slick, so that when it dries, it’s so hard it’ll hold water, leaving them a wet spot when the water goes down. We’d spent the whole night in a gator wallow, with our feet hanging out over the river, and my heart sank into my toes, as I really began to feel fear for the first time on this trip. Ronnie was quietly cursing to himself, breathless.

Filled with a new sense of urgency, we didn’t say a word, gathered our things and launched the canoe again. It was a soft morning, and was beginning to brighten. We hit open water, and the river widened. We found ourselves floating through a hardwood glade, as the birds awakened and began to sing. A chuck will’s widow softly called, then an owl. I looked off to my right to see an owl sweeping silently through the trees toward us. As it swung up to perch 50’ in front of us, a shaft of sunlight pierced the trees, plainly showing the bars of red on its tail feathers as they flared, before they closed again. Then the vision was gone, and the gloom of the woods closed in again.

The banks grew higher again as the sun rose, and sunlight hit the water around us, dappled with leaf shadows. The current quickened and the morning warmed, and we paddled harder and for longer stretches, our spirits lifting some. We passed a feral piglet, struggling to get out of the water, squealing its lungs out, and the ripples that approached it. We kept paddling; there was a splash and the sound suddenly stopped behind us as we paddled harder.

Steering the boat through the snags like a slalom course, we found a stretch where the water was clear of obstacles, so we paddled ‘til we were gasping. Ronnie was softly crying, “How much further can it be?” We were determined not to spend another night out, and didn’t even have to discuss it; then the boat lurched to the left, and I hollered out, ”Hey! What are you doing?” Ronnie called back, half gasping, “That wasn’t me. A six-foot alligator just swam under us, and caught us on his scutes!” And we paddled even harder.

After about 3 hours of solid paddling, we started to see cypress trees again, and began to hope we were nearing our takeout point. We started to get excited, until finally, Ronnie yelled out, ”That’s the tree! We made it! We’re still alive!”

“Are you sure?!” I was almost in tears.

Nobody else I’ve ever met can do that – recognize a tree he’s only ever seen from the other side. But he was right. It was the right tree, and we pulled into a backwater right next to it, where the banks sloped gently down to the water’s edge. Gingerly, we each stepped out of the boat, pulled up the boat, and collapsed on the ground, just lying there, catching our breath and waiting for our heartbeats to slow down to normal.

Finally, we got up, stretched our tired muscles, and picked up the boat. We carried it, stumbling up the rise, and caught sight of my truck as we hit the crest. The tire was flat.