Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [207]
The phone rang.
“Charlie, can you get that please? I’ve gotta—Joe! No Joe, we’ll get that—oh—oh, okay. Okay! Charlie, never mind! Joe’s got it!”
FRANK WENT DOWN TO THE POTOMAC for one last trip out before they left.
It was a hot spring day, the world green and steaming. Charlie couldn’t make it; Drepung couldn’t make it. Caroline was driving down from the farm later with a picnic lunch; she too was busy, and said she would get to Great Falls before he was finished. She planned to sit on the bluff overlooking the downstream end of Mather Gorge, near the put-in, while he paddled up the Fish Ladder.
An hour later, while taking a rest from his salmon leaps up the Ladder, he looked up at the bluff but did not see her.
When he looked back at the falls, the woman kayaker he had seen twice before was already three steps up the Ladder and ascending like a kingfisher or a water ouzel. As before, the sight of her leaped in his vision, it was like being nudged by the side of the world: broad shoulders, big lats, a thick braid of black hair bouncing on her neck—for an instant, a profile—maybe that was it—or the way she moved. Beautiful. He took off after her, he didn’t know why; he intended nothing by it, he knew his Caroline would soon be there; it was just a curiosity that put him in pursuit, some itch to see.
Hard paddle into the first white drop, punching into the flow to get enough acceleration to slide up onto the flat spot above. Do it again. Do it again. Each flat spot had a slightly different length, leading to a different speed of water at the infall. The drops got harder, though in truth they were almost as even as stairs—but not quite—and near the top, the ones that were just a bit taller took a terrific effort to ascend.
But he made it to the top. His lungs were burning and his arms were on fire. He had never managed it before and here he was, on the big sweep of the upper Potomac.
But there she was, rounding a bend upstream, still paddling hard. Frank set off in pursuit, confident now he had ascended the ladder that there were no impediments to catching her. He took off at a racing pace.
But so had she. When he rounded the first bend she was already at the next one; and when he rounded that, his arms in a hot lactic scream, she was even farther ahead, in the long straight section that came there. And yet it wouldn’t be that long before she made it to the next bend; and she was still paddling hard. Frank pushed one last time, breathing hard now, sweating until his eyes stung, trying to ignore the lactic acid in the pulling muscles of his arms and chest, until the time came that they felt like blocks of wood. His kayak was slowing down.
When he rounded the bend at the end of the straight, she was disappearing ahead. Gone. He had to give up.
He stopped and sucked down air, sweating, wiping sweat off his eyebrows with the backs of his hands. Cramps flickered through his muscles. He let the kayak drift downstream on the current. He had given it his all. Chasing beauty upstream until he couldn’t anymore. A very fast goddess. Oh well.
Now there was the Great Falls of the Potomac to attend to. Very few took the biggest drops in a kayak; they could be fatal. Only the best professionals would even think of it. Everyone else ran the various alternatives, not just the Fish Ladder but other parts of the complex of falls on the Maryland side, more or less difficult.
He took the drop called The Ping Pong, struggling with the big bounces in the midsection, his arms burning again, almost too tired to perform the absolutely necessary course corrections—but too tired to risk an overturn either. He had to stay upright, he was panting as he worked, and would not be able to hold his breath for long. He had to stay upright!
He got through the drops. In the hissing white flow of re-collecting water at the bottom of the falls he floated thankfully, spent. He had just enough strength left to paddle to the Virginia shore. On the bluff overhead, Caroline was watching him.
He grabbed the put-in boulder