All they could do was keep it straight. Let the river pull them to the outside, right, and keep the canoe straight to the current, parallel, so anything they hit they’d hit dead on. Less chance of a flip. Not much to do, but something. They paddled and the first waves lapped over, and in the rolling plumes they strained to see the dark surface—it was broken by pale crashings but not everywhere, they needed to stay out of the holes. They were being sucked to the right, to the turning bank, and the bow reared and bucked and crashed down and they took on more water and she was bailing and if someone, anyone, was yelling they didn’t hear it, it was subsumed in the general roar. And then the burst, ballistic, of a tree exploding, and beyond the scrim of trees, which was only a scrim now, the spruce were backlit and spindled as if by molten sun; beyond them, over the tops, they saw a jet of fire erupt skyward and heard the whoosh and saw a white billow as of steam against a sky no longer dark and then a whoosh and another tree exploded and the tops of the trees along the bank began to burn. It was crowning. Maybe it was awe. The awe of the earth burning to cinders—they could not not look and they missed seeing the hole and the bow reared and plunged into a deep backward-crashing trough. The stem of the canoe half reared again, wildly, clawing out of it, and the seething backwash flung them sideways and it was all water. Water pummeling, the roar gone strangely mute, and Jack tried to grab the boat, any piece of it, and was torn free, he held to the paddle and was shoved and beaten to the bottom. What a hole does: takes you under. Maybe it was deep but his knee struck stone and he was tumbling, knew he was free of the hydraulic, had the paddle, he buoyed up bursting for breath and came clear into a chop of boiling waves but no boulders, good, and the first thing he saw was the trees all along the riverbank catching fire, crown to crown.
Jack was swimming. He looked wildly around and saw that the canoe was right there, capsized and awash a few feet off. He lunged and threw an arm against the water-smooth hull and worked along it to the bow and found the rope. He grabbed it. He put the paddle in that hand and began kicking and swimming hard sidestroke, pulling the heavy boat behind him. Wynn saw it. He was just behind, had held to his paddle, too, the first reflex, and had been shoved to the bottom in the hole and came up thrashing for her and did not see her, and went through a low crashing wave, and when he struck for the surface he came up against her. She was flailing with one arm and choking and he yelled, screamed to flip on her back and she did and he began hauling her hard to the right bank, following Jack. They all three were shoved down into the tailwater, a long riffle, and they were very close to the bank, good, and they got three, then four hard strokes past an outstuck boulder and were in the shore eddy which was wide and calm. No calm for them. They buoyed into the narrow dark pool against a shore of smoothed cobbles and Wynn was shoved against Jack and felt the tug of Maia going past and he pulled her in, and the canoe swung down below them against the bank and Jack yelled, “Get behind it! The boat!” He gripped the bow rope and now he let go of the paddle and pulled the shoulder of Wynn’s life vest, pulled the other two down into him—they were in the shallows, maybe a foot, two, of ice water—and he yanked the flipped canoe up to them and they all heard the rush and saw the entire wall of trees across go to flame. The thick smoke could not obscure it. They could feel the wind. The wind was dense with sparks and flying debris. The canoe was a low redoubt and they huddled behind it, the eddy current keeping it straight to shore, and Jack screamed, “It’s crowning! Heads down, heads down! Faces down in the rocks!” They did. They buried their faces between the cobbles in inches of water and they felt a wind like some demonic thing, like nothing on earth, a searing gust that pummeled the canoe, they could hear the burning wood flail against it, the tick of embers, they were lying in water heads down in the ice runnels between stones and could not help but hear the passing over of hell.
It flashed over. There must have been a change of wind or one measure of God’s mercy. Because it did not bake them or sear their lungs. Not a true flashover or they would be gone. But they felt the hot gusts go over and then they heard the trees above them flare and scream like nothing human but spirit maybe, a singeing, crackling protest, and burning limbs began to break on the gravel bar. Also the wind stopped. The fierceness of it. As of a breath expelled. It was still there, pressing their backs, but no longer malign. Like a hot wind, like the ones that barrel up a desert river in late afternoon. Jack knew. He got to his knees and with one crazy heave he flipped the boat back over. Where was the pot? He’d clipped it to the thwart he was sure, he didn’t see it, fuck it, the boat was awash but they were out of the rapids, the river was a mild riffle now, they had to get across. Back across. Back into the teeth of the burn. Because it was hot and flaming still but across the river it was already burned over, it was blackened, it had expelled its life and so all its ferocity. They had to get there because the head of the fire was on this side now and it was all waiting unburned fuel and it would flare, it was crowning above them, in a minute it would catch the whole bank and start creating its own wind as it had before, and if the wind backed around and the smoke and gases blew back over the water and flashed they could all still cook. The fire on this side could jump back over the river and there’d be nothing left to burn but them. He shook Wynn hard and his head came up and Jack said, “We’ve got to get back in the boat, now! When this whole bank really goes it can cook us, too. Now!” Wynn was dazed but nodded.
She was moaning. Good. She had not choked. Her injured arm had come free, lost the sling, it lay useless beside her. Wynn rolled her over and a burning twig hit her face; her face was wet, thank God, it hissed, he cursed and turned her on her side and said loudly in her ear, “Listen, we will rest soon, we’ve got to get back in the boat. Got to go now.”
Wynn rose and turned and screamed. A burning mat struck the left side of his face. Jack spun. Leaf or bark in flame, and whipped where it fell by the back-gusting wind, it struck the side of Wynn’s face and stuck like a burning hand and he slapped his palms to his cheek and screamed again and stumbled into thigh-deep water and fell in. Jack ran. Wynn was wallowing upward back onto the bank and he was cursing and trying not to touch his face where a raw strip exactly like the sear of a wide grill and curdled with blood cut his cheek from lip to the outside corner of his eye. Jack had grabbed him as he stumbled and Wynn stood and said, “I’m all right. It shocked me. I’m okay. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He didn’t look okay, but Jack thought, He has all his limbs, let’s blow.
* * *
The canoe was awash, scraping rock—lucky it had not broken against a boulder. They left Maia where she lay and hauled the boat up on wet stones and under a rain of burning needles and branches managed to roll it and dump the water. The strapped bag and box and slung rifle had stayed in, thank God, but they’d lost the blueberries. There was the little steel pot swinging and knocking against the thwart. Wynn attacked the last few inches of water and bailed fast. Enough. The burning debris rained down, they swiped it off of arms, shoulders, and Jack had to hustle to Maia to kick a burning limb away from her leg—an inconstant blizzard of sparks, bunches of pine needles flaming like flares, birch leaves ignited to molten lace rained down, but the wind had gone quiet, it eddied as if confused, circled around them like a dog settling for sleep, the dense smoke had lightened, the jet roar had yielded to the crackling and shirr of a thousand campfires, it was eerie.
It scared Jack more than the full-on assault, he didn’t know why. He did know: it was because the flash had burned through, the front line had stampeded past, they were just at the edge of a thousand square miles of new fuel ready to ignite, barely behind it, like standing at the tail of a T. rex. The fire was beginning to take hold in the new woods, it was beginning to crown in the tops of the new trees, they had to go. They slid the boat back into the shallows and carried Maia and shoved back into the smaller waves of the tailwater.
They did not look behind them now. They could hear again the gathering whispers, the swooshes and squeals, the cracks, almost as if the fire were questioning its own intentions and the woods were answering: “We have been waiting for you our whole lives.” Less extreme violence now, more a difficult but cathartic conversation. That would change. Jack knew that soon the fire would rediscover its passion for death. They paddled. They did not ferry but angled downstream and across, and when they neared the far shore and Wynn began to turn her straight downstream Jack yelled, “Go to the bank!”
“What!”
“We’re not safe on the river!”