Deliverance - James Dickey [82]
the water deepened, Bobby stepped into the canoe and picked up the paddle. Drew and I moved off the end of the rapids and I took slow flight in my life preserver. I looked at Drew's hand floating palm-up with the guitar calluses puckered and white and his college class ring on it, and I wondered if his wife might not like to have the ring. But no; I couldn't even do that; it would mean having to explain. I touched the callus on the middle finger of his left hand, and my eyes blinded with tears. I lay with him in my arms for a moment weeping river-water, going with him. I could have cried as long as the river ran, but there was no time. "You were the best of us, Drew," I said loud enough for Bobby to hear; I wanted him to hear. "The only decent one; the only sane one." I undid his life belt and let him fall away under me. On his knees beside Lewis in the canoe, Bobby heaved the stone overboard. One of Drew's feet flew up and touched my calf, and we were free and in hell. I stayed in the water behind the canoe, holding the jacket in one hand. Made weightless, my legs hurt twice as bad. I wanted to sleep, to sink, not have to breathe. I lay and moved with the river, with all nightmares and night sweats to come, but not here, not on me yet. When we came to another shallow place, I got up from the gravel and the crawfish, took up my full weight and half again more, and got into the rear seat with the sun hot and heavy-wet on my shoulders and back as though packed there in layers. For a long time nothing happened but fatigue and heat. Insects danced over the canoe between Bobby and me, a singing haze I was not sure wasn't inside my head. But the walls were dropping steadily on both sides. In a few more miles the cliffs gave out on the right, and there was only a low fence of rock on the other side. Then it too slanted to the river, and we were level with the woods again. I knew I must have misjudged the distance we had to go, for there seemed to be no end to it. Bobby's head was down; the most I could hope for from him was to keep steady in the canoe and not fall and tip us over. If we spilled in deep water or rapids now it would be a real problem to get back in, and we would never get Lewis in. I had put on Drew's life jacket over mine. It was awfully hot that way, but the extra collar came up higher on the back of my neck and kept the sun off it, and I was grateful for that. My mind danced for minutes on end like gnats around the image of the long, tumbling voyage down the rapids the jacket had taken, trying to keep Drew from drowning when he was already dead, probably, from something else. I could feel my lips swelling with the sun. I was coming slowly up against an absolute limit, but I did not know where it was, or where we would be on the river when I got to it, or what I would do when I did. Was there anything I could say to myself, or even to Bobby, that would help? "Bobby," I said suddenly, "hang on. If we can stay with it for ten miles we'll be out. I know we will. We've come an awful goddamned long way, and it can't be much longer." He tried to nod, and partly did. "Don't rock us, baby. And if you see anything I can't see, tell me. If we hit any rapids, call the rocks for me. If you can't do that, get down with Lewis and pray, but try to help us stay level." There was a low new tone in the river: an old one, something I recognized. "God," I said. "Do something for us." We went toward it, but when we came around the next turn there was nothing but another turn about a half mile ahead. The sound came from there, or through there. "I think I hear some rapids, Bobby. I know I do. If we can walk the canoe through, let's do it. We can do it. But if we can't, we'll have to run them." We went down, picking up speed, and the step-up in sound, like a dial being tuned, brought up the old terror, but also excitement: the sensation Lewis was always describing; I felt it, tired as I was. We went into the next turn, and I knew, with the sound I was hearing, that if the rapids were on the turn or even within sight when we straightened