Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [42]
She smirked. “Resort, huh? I should fit right in.”
The Bare Bottom Resort was a nudist colony populated by all manner of society—from the older and more comfortable to the younger and more experimental. They usually stayed back from the river and didn’t draw attention, but if you didn’t know what to expect, you might find yourself surprised.
She tapped me in the chest pocket and raised her eyebrows. “What’re we checking off today?”
“Honey, we’re going to try and find some water and, if we’re lucky, some clothes for you.”
She slipped her leg outside the zipper of her sleeping bag. Several small bruises polka-dotted her thigh. “Cheer up…It’s not every day you get to paddle your favorite river with a naked woman.”
“Good point.”
I reached behind my seat for the map case, but it, too, was gone. I patted my chest hoping to hear the rustle of the plastic bag. No rustle.
She read it on my face. “That too, huh?” I nodded. The sides of her lips turned up. “I think I can remember.”
It was a familiar place. I scratched my head. When everything is gone, what remains?
I hadn’t been paddling twenty minutes when I pushed the bow of the canoe through some overhanging limbs and pulled through into a deep pool on the other side. The bank rose twenty feet on either side, nearly straight up. Downed trees formed a spaghetti junction so I stepped out, threw my arms through the straps and leaned into their weight. It was like walking on a beaver dam for a hundred yards. With every step, I’d break through one layer of twigs and sticks, only to be temporarily stopped by another layer submerged between the surface. I pulled on the limbs, ducked below others and stepped over still others. The problem was not me but the canoe—and not breaking every one of Abbie’s ribs. I was pulling the canoe over a log, sweat pouring off my face, my hands cut and bleeding, and Abbie’s hand came up over the edge. She was starting to laugh. “Honey?”
I set my feet and pulled. Then set them again and pulled harder. Finally, the canoe slid over the log and glided across the water about four feet until it hit another log. Standing hurt. “Yes?”
“When we get home, let’s get this thing serviced. I think the shocks on this baby are shot.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Good.” She lay back down. “Wake me when we get out of this mess.”
I walked around to the bow, grabbed the ropes again and stared at the river in front of us. There were another fifty such trees—horizontal hurdles—just within eyesight. When Abbie had said all the way from Moniac, this is what she meant. The impossible part where there is no rhythm other than some offbeat thing that only the river hears. Here, the river owns you. It breaks you down, holds you at its mercy and you don’t stand a chance. It is here that she stops you. Makes you look around. Forces you to measure…and be measured.
Forearm-thick muscadine vines, starting on opposite banks, had climbed up the live oak trunks and then crossed over the river using the limbs as a trellis. Having met in the middle, they interlocked, wove together and created a patchwork through which little sunlight passed but, come September, would hang thick with grapes. Currently, they were thick with leaves and little green flowers and crawling with lizards.
The vines often exceed a hundred feet in length and flourish in warm and humid conditions where the soil is sandy. Hence, the river. The tough-skinned, five-seeded grapes grow to two inches in diameter and range in color from greenish bronze to bronze, to pinkish red, purple and almost black.
When they ripen, folks will lay a tarp across the ground and shake the vine. Sugar content of the grapes can reach twenty-five percent, so they’ll make good jellies and jams, but down here the preferred use is wine.
I slid over a log, heaved on the canoe and it slid over and down, resting in the water. I was spent. I leaned on the bow, gorging